By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton High School has a newly formed alumni association that will help graduates “catch up” with their classmates and alma mater as well as to provide current students with mentors to help guide them into college and career.
“Our goal is really is two-fold,” district spokeswoman Brenda Sewell said Tuesday. “We definitely want to connect alumni with each other, give them an opportunity and a space to reconnect, to catch up with classmates and their peers. But we also want to make sure that we’re thinking about our current students and using the resource that is our alumni to help our students.”
PHS alumna Mia Sacks, a 1983 graduate, approached the district last year with the idea of having an alumni group. By phone Tuesday, she said many private high schools have such associations, but they’re rare at public schools.
“I felt that why shouldn’t public schools also have this resource for their students,” Sacks said. “That was a big motivating factor for me.”
The organization, run through the school district, will have its official launch on homecoming weekend, Oct.20 and 21. Sewell said there has been some outreach already to get alumni involved.
Sacks said her vision for the organization is to model it after college alumni associations, to help current students “in the form of mentorships, college connections (and) internships.”
“There are alumni all across the country who have been extraordinarily successful in a wide variety of fields,” she said in noting that, for instance, actor John Lithgow went to PHS. “There are alumni who could serve as role models and be a connection for them.”
“Our alumni are in so many different fields and have done so many different things, and we really wanted to reconnect with our alumni,” Sewell said.