The consulting firm hired by the Princeton Public Schools to help the district chart its future will present its initial findings at a special community forum set for Jan. 25 at Princeton High School.
The meeting, which will also include interactive workshops and small discussion groups, will run from 9-11 a.m. in the Princeton High School cafeteria. The school is located at 151 Moore St.
The Jan. 25 session is the first one in a series of interactive workshops, informational meetings, focus groups and surveys planned by school district officials and the consulting firm of Milone & MacBroom. The goal is to help establish community goals and priorities.
The Connecticut-based firm was hired by the Princeton Public Schools Board of Education in September 2019 to help the school district puzzle out how to accommodate the anticipated influx of students who are expected to enroll in the next five years.
Current estimates show the Princeton Public Schools growing by several hundred students over the next five years, Superintendent of Schools Steve Cochrane said. The district needs to plan for that growth in ways that consider numerous factors, he said.
“[Those factors] include facility and play area expansion, land use throughout the community, sustainability, potential redistricting, educational vision and, of course, affordability and diversity,” Cochrane said.
“The challenge is great and the outcome incredibly important to our kids and our community,” he said.
That is why the school board hired Milone & MacBroom at a cost of $143,605.
The consultant is engaged in a three-part planning process. It is nearing completion of the fact-finding stage, which is the first part of the three-part planning process. The fact-finding process is expected to wrap up at the end of January.
Milone & MacBroom spent November conducting a detailed analysis of the school district’s data. The consultants reviewed the school district’s projected enrollment, student growth, bus and transportation issues, and the Cranbury School District’s sending-receiving relationship with the Princeton Public Schools.
The Princeton and Cranbury school districts have an arrangement in which Cranbury high school students attend Princeton High School on a tuition basis. The Cranbury School District does not have its own high school.
During its November visit, Milone & MacBroom also reviewed the functional capacity of the six school buildings. A detailed analysis of the district’s educational programs also is part of the study.
The second stage of the study, which will take place from the end of January to the end of March, is scenario development. The consultant will reach out to the school board, the community and school district professionals to come up with a vision for the schools, to prioritize its needs, and to review preliminary alternatives, Cochrane said.
The third and final stage takes place from April through the beginning of June. The consultants will narrow down the scenarios and provide school district officials with a range of recommendations that are both educationally and economically sound, Cochrane said.
On-going community engagement and input is critical to the planning process, and there are three elements to that input, Cochrane said.
One element is the technical advisory committee, “which is a kind of steering committee that will help the consultants navigate the practical and political complexities of the planning process,” he said.
The district professionals and community experts will review data, provide feedback on scenarios before they are ready to be released, and help to monitor the planning process and schedule, Cochrane said.
The second element involves community liaisons, he said. It will include stakeholders from throughout the community to ensure that all voices are heard and that people are informed and engaged. The list of community liaisons is being developed, he said.
The informational meetings and interactive workshops, such as the one set for Jan. 25, is the third element in the community outreach process, Cochrane said. There will be additional community forums and workshops.
School district officials have been concerned that the district may be faced with an influx of students, partly due to the anticipated construction of more than 700 units of housing – including low- and moderate -income housing – to help the town meet its obligation to provide its fair share of affordable housing.
Believing that it may face a projected enrollment of more than 4,500 students by 2027, the school board was planning to build a new grades 5-6 middle school, purchase an office building and 15 acres of land on Thanet Circle for school district offices, renovate Princeton High School and carry out some smaller projects at a total cost of $129 million.
But residents balked at the price tag and the resultant property tax hike, so the proposed $129 million bond referendum was scrapped in favor of a smaller, targeted bond referendum.
In place of the $129 million bond referendum, the school board prepared a scaled-down bond referendum of $26.9 million, which gained Princeton voters’ approval in December 2018.
The $26.9 million bond referendum has money to pay for air conditioning in every classroom at the Community Park, Johnson Park, Littlebrook and Riverside elementary schools.
There is money for security improvements in all six school buildings, four additional classrooms at Princeton High School, and upgrades to the library at the Littlebrook School.