By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A committee of administrators and teachers at Princeton High School is expected to recommend starting school later in the morning, in a move designed to alleviate the stress levels of overworked students who complain they don’t get enough sleep., Superintendent of Schools Stephen C. Cochrane, in a text message Thursday, said “proposed changes” would go before the school board “early” next month. He did not elaborate., High School Principal Gary Snyder, who organized the so-called “bell schedule committee” that is examining this and other issues, outlined steps the committee will recommend. Recommendations call for starting school later in the morning, providing “a mid-morning break” for students and rotating the daily schedule, “so that not every day would be the same,” Snyder said by phone., Any change in the schedule — with school now starting at 7:50 a.m. and ending at 2:51 p.m. on normal days — would have implications for after school activities including sports and for students from Cranbury who get bussed to Princeton. The new starting time, as well as the ending time of the school day, would have to be determined., “There’s a lot of pieces that have to get worked out, and we don’t have all those answers …,” Snyder said., For its part, the school board is receptive to ways to help students. School board president Patrick Sullivan said Thursday that he supports starting school later., “The board is flexible and willing to look at proposed schedule changes that could affect the start and end of school day, if the administrators and teachers were willing to look at it,” he said. “We’re not going to say no if they suggest it.”, Any schedule change, however, would take effect for the 2018/19 school year, said Sullivan. He said he wants to see more immediate changes to improve the climate at the high school, in the aftermath of a recent survey of PHS students finding large percentages of them feel stressed out., “I’m interested in September 2017 in what suggestions they’re going to have to reduce the stress and workload for kids who are in the building now,” Sullivan said., Snyder touched on some other ideas the committee came up with., One proposal calls for mixing up the daily schedule “so that the schedule is not always (periods) one through eight.” Such a change would allow for some class periods to be longer and others shorter. At the moment, the school has 45-minute classes every day, except Wednesday., “I think what’s been exciting is just that the building and the faculty and the students are excited by the conversations, are excited by the prospects of doing some things differently that can allow some things, structurally, to happen and to work differently,” Snyder said. “There’s plenty of questions about how some of these things might work out and what some of the ramifications could be.”, Cranbury Chief School Administrator Susan Genco, whose district has hundreds of students at the high school on a send-receive basis, could not be reached for comment Thursday., Princeton High School has a reputation as a high performing school, where graduates go off to top colleges. But students complain of not getting enough sleep, having several hours of homework per night, on top of their regular school day, and whatever extracurricular activities they are involved in. One former administrator at the school said this week he favors pushing back the start of the school day., “I am not a psychologist, but all the research that I’ve read shows that it is important that children get enough sleep,” said John Anagbo, who retired from the district., He said his sense, from having worked in the high school in recent years, is that the “kids are all stressed out.”, “I heard it almost every week, because I always was talking to students,” he said. “Now I think it’s reached a point where we can no longer ignore it.”
