everyone my name is valerie francois welcome to another edition of this week in education today i'm joined by steve cochran our superintendent of princeton public schools welcome steve to this show glad to be here you thank you for coming so many in the purity have had a chance to know you over the years but for those who might need to the district can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the journey that led you here to princeton sure sure  actually was a student at princeton university many years ago and then found my way from being a university administrator to teaching elementary school in a public school  nearby and went on to be common elementary principal and then a middle school principal eventually an assistant superintendent and job i hope for a number of years but when the superintendent she opened here in princeton just about five years ago  really walk on the opportunity to be able to give back to a community that has given so much to me so this is my fifth year as superintendent i feel very privileged to to be able to serve the community in this capacity well congratulations on your time here thank you so today we're going to talk about the school facilities referendum that the community will be voting on december eleventh but before we talk about the specifics other though we could maybe step back a little bit and talk about the central point of this at the district  little bit about the mission of public schools the mission the mission of the princeton public schools is to prepare all students to leave lives of joy and purpose as knowledgeable creative and compassionate citizens of a global society that is the mission verbatim right from it is it is not a boiler plate mission that focus on joy and purpose really does make it distinctive i think from the mission statements of many school districts our mission is not about getting kids into elite private schools that may be a result of the quality education that we provide but it's really  focus on joy and purpose for our students in the now to give them the knowledge they need the focus on creativity and their compassion to thrive and make a difference in the world in whatever way they choose  can talk about how the mission came about sure it was like so much in our community it was a very collaborative partnership based effort so in two thousand and fifteen we brought together sixty to seventy people whose parents it was teachers it was administrators it was community leaders and we we met for two days and we really examined what are our our hopes and dreams for for our children we have goals around wellness and balance for students hence the joy and purpose we have goals around every child being known as an individual as a as a person and as a learner closing the achievement gap and really establishing equity  in our community and that focus on the mission for all student we had a goal around innovation in teaching and learning and a goal around communication care and connectedness so we can really see how to plan yes yes ok so now that we're moving forward and we're looking at important issues like the school facilities referendum how does the mission come into play exactly everything everything we do as a school district is guided by our mission and our goals we lead with our values so whether we are designing curriculum or designing buildings or designing an age back system we have to begin by looking at at that our our goals and our values and what this means for students and staff so for example with this referendum  are focused a lot on safety and security on h b o on on those kinds of improvements to our schools that that impact the physical and emotional wellness of our students that's a fundamental goal that's part of the strategic plan and the wellness of our kids we can't learn when they're not feeling safe secure comfortable in their learning environment so that's one example of how that strategic plan how those school and maybe we can talk about the middle and the high school absolutely so i would actually step back and say there are there are four large categories into which the projects fall that we're focused on with this particular referendum of twenty six point nine million dollars safety and security is one each back heating ventilation air conditioning sustainability would be a second important category a third would  be some enhanced been some improvements needed improvements at princeton high school some in those first two areas some around around space and and finally some very basic enhanced mintz to our athletic program  so that if we if we take a look at what that means for the elementary schools to start with each of the one we're spending i think around eleven million dollars on across the four elementary schools but each of those elementary schools is going to get in the of safety and security a secure and welcoming entryway into the building and currently people can walk into those buildings and not really have to check in with the main office they could just wander through the hallways and so we want  particularly in this day and age to ensure that our our children are safe and feel safe and so there's that focus we also will be changing out the door hard there are some glass those kinds of things that are maybe not visible t the people walking through but are important additions that are up to the security standards of today so there's that in the safety and security realm a couple of our elementary schools will get some  some walls that will provide security in the building that they can be closed or opened at as needed to provide some security and in the evening for example if there are events being held in the school in the evening so then all of the schools will be getting improvements in the back so across the elementary schools i think there are roughly ninety classrooms that currently do not have air conditioning that will receive air conditioning the number vary slightly in each school  but we're also be so we'll be adding air conditioning loss to be upgrading the back systems so many of our classrooms now may have window air conditioner but that's not up to code and it's not the most efficient way of air conditioning so  we're looking to be sustainable in our approaches here with r h back changes will be adding some electrical as we're moving through the system and adding the back piece will be adding more electric as well in our classrooms to support the learning in that way and that is that those are the primary changes that we're looking at each of the elementary school safety security and some of upgraded additional h back ok what about the middle school in the middle school all of our buildings will be getting that same safe secure entryway the middle school will as well in addition the middle school will be getting the facts it will be getting i think about thirty eight classrooms at the middle school thirty eight forty classrooms at the middle school receive h back so we're looking forward to having that addition there we will be putting in  a connector between the sea and the wings so currently students either have to go all the way around the building to get to their classes and this covered connector will just allow for efficiency as they travel the building and it's a large building and it's becoming more crowded so the more efficient we can make travel through the facility the better for learning and then we're going to be taking a look at the what was the old library space that's currently not handicapped accessible and is not used for instruction so we are going to be taking that space and creating i believe two additional instructional spaces classrooms within the old library and we're also go expanding the nurses suite for a school the size of j w of our middle school the nurses suite is very small so we're going to be expanding that we're going to be making some acoustical improvements to  cafeteria which i think can get kind of loud both when students are there and when we often will hold evening meetings there in that space and it's not as acoustically sound as we would like it so we'll be adding some acoustic or pretty improvements there so i think you know we're looking around for a half million dollars of improvements to the j w a n b a h back to security and a little bit of space ok i know a significant part of that is the high school sure so we're looking at close to eleven million dollars in investment in the high school and i'm excited about the work that will be done there so yes the high school two will be getting the safe secure entryway that we also we're going to be renovating our school counseling and guidance area so that is an area that is used by all students all six hundred of our current students go there to see our counselors and they may go there for the class changes and those kinds of routine conversations but they also go there for a very personal conversations and support and currently that space is it's a bit  interactions that our students would be having with their counselors ok so there's that piece we're also adding what we call distributed dining so right now sixteen hundred students have to go to the cafeteria if they want to buy lunch and getting all of the students through the cafeteria line in and a half an hour is not not that easy so we want to make good nutrition accessible to our students that's part of the wellness and so we were taking what used to be the old bookstore on the main level it's not being current it's not currently being used and so we're going to convert that to an area where we can distribute food and so it might be sandwiches or salads those kinds of things that students can gain so they don't have to all go through the cafeteria in order to to get lunch so we're looking forward to that change we will be making some some major changes in the control systems at the high within the same building so they might be in the arctic biome for one class and then go to the you know rain for a summer or another and so we're looking to begin the process of upgrading the controllers that will allow us to have more even temperatures more comfortable temperatures throughout the building we will be adding h back to the gym which is going to be major that's a place that is used every day by our kids it's also in some years where we've been forced to hold indoor graduation and in my experience my first two years we were inside and the temperatures were over one hundred ten degrees inside that space so we'll be adding that we'll also at the high school and it's really it's a little bit to the athletic improvements  events so we'll be adding that piece will be adding some scoreboards at the middle school and some dugouts in those kind of basic improvements on the athletic front st now you kind of touched on this a little bit but we keep hearing the word urgency when this we were describing some of these issues can you talk about why there's an urgency at this particular time sure our buildings are our old our our youngest none of our buildings were were designed in a world in which we're experiencing the kinds of security crises that we're having now in the past month valerie in our country we've person and then just recently in california in a nightclub there was another mass shooting so sadly we have to consider the safety of our of our students and staff in light of what's happening in our country and in our world and so there is an urgency around that in terms of safety and security the other urgent piece is in the area of health so this year like many school districts throughout new jersey we had evidence of mold which affected our air quality throughout all of our buildings to some degree there were it was the the wettest summer on record  and we had thirty seven days which the humidity level was over eighty percent in july and august again a record and so we as a result of that experience higher levels of  mold within our schools because not all of our buildings have air conditioning and that air conditioning isn't regulated in such a way that if the humidity level gets to a certain to a point that the air conditioning might kick on automatically those are the kinds of changes that i think we would be instituting through the referendum do impact the health of our of our students and staff and so i do i do see that there's some urgency around that i i'm not sure that  the the climate is going to change any time soon so i think we will be continuing to see the kinds of high temperatures and humid conditions that we experienced this summer and also obviously  you had a lot of input from the community can you talk about how the community was involved in that process oh sure one of our our values as a district is a partnership partnership with  parents and community leaders and so we went into this this process with the goal of making sure that we were connecting to all of those partners and we began the process almost two years ago with a detailed needs analysis of all of our buildings we did multiple demographic studies to see how or and roll meant was was increasing and what the projections were for the future and we did a capacity study of all of our buildings so once we had the results of those studies we brought in an architectural team and we had actually six architects who came in they engaged in what they call the  they they met where they met with students at every level they at every building they they met with staff they met with administrators they met with community leaders and community partners people who had interest in sustainability groups that had an interest in historical preservation groups that had a real understanding and expertise in issues of educational equity and community engagement and parenting gage meant so we had architects and i meeting regularly with those sorts of groups i think we had over this process over the course of the past twenty months forty at least forty separate meetings some of those were designed to share information with the community and some of those were designed to receive feedback from the community about about the projects and the board were really listened and so they they took in the input that they received at board meetings and in some of these other sessions and then made a decision to to focus for this referendum in on december eleventh on the most urgent and immediate needs that we have in our our buildings ok and tell us a little bit about how this vote would fit into the overall plan looking forward for the distant future sure we all of our buildings are at or over capacity and the multiple demographic reports we have conducted all point to enroll and continuing to increase so we're actually looking at an increase over the next decade seven to eight hundred more students and that's indicative of the growth  happening more predict projected for our town as a whole it's an attractive place to live people want to be here there is an affordable housing settlement that has impacted the growth and so  need to address that so this referendum the smaller referendum does provide at summit an initial step towards addressing the capacity issue therefore so one of the things i should have mentioned before there are four classrooms being added at the high school all right so we're putting in addition on their four classrooms and we're also adding some space for putting a second floor above the fitness center of the high school to add space for  activities during the day and for wrestling and fencing after school so there is some step towards addressing the capacity issue at the high school but we still need much more we are looking at five students over capacity right now we're at seven fifty seven going up to over eight fifty within a couple of years and so we we are providing a few new classrooms in the next in this december referendum that in the us that but we need to do more to take a look at how we're going to come together as a community to provide the space that that we need for twelve three so i know one of the best ways for parents to learn more is to take some of the tories that are being offered on saturdays can you tell us a little bit about that and even attended some of it you know i have i have so we are yeah there's no better way to learn and then to to sort of a hands on physical way right oh i can talk forever or we can put out information but if people can actually physically experience something they have a much better sense and so we were fortunate to have a parent who's going to be leading towards i believe on saturday november seventeenth on saturday december first and saturday december eighth i think nine fifteen and ten ten thirty ten thirty those two will meet by the flagpole in front of the high school and those tours will take people through the improvements that we're looking to make through this referendum so that look at the entryway to the high school and where the safe secure entryway would go they'll go into the guidance suite or area now the school counseling area and see what our students currently experience you'll see  where the four classrooms would be added they'll see the distributed dining area and be able to walk through the hallways and see some of the other kinds of changes that need to be made you know new lighting put in for example and some other things that will make the the school because of better learning environment for our kids and our staff wonderful who else would you like parents and community to know when it comes to this  well i would say learn as much as you can so the tours are one way we were going to be launching a website that has f a q's that will have videos a power point so i would want people to to educate themselves and i would want people to vote on december eleventh so on the web site will also list the voting locations so it's a consolidated voting location so we have at the four elementary schools where people will be voting and they can see which where their district is and which school they'd be voting on so that would be the very first thing is to please to please educate yourself about the referendum and to come out and vote on on december eleventh  some of the the questions that we sometimes get asked is you know what is going to be the tax impact so the cost of the referendum is is twenty six point nine million dollars for these sort of most immediate urgent needs that we've talked about the impact on tax payers the additional impact beyond what they're paying now in the first year of b is about fifty seven dollars annually on an average assessed home so an average assessed home in princeton is around eight hundred thirty seven thousand dollars so if it's assessed at that value it would be about fifty seven dollars for the year for the improvements that we've described and so that's that's one  other thing that sometimes we get asked is you know if the referendum passes you know how are we going to manage the projects and so i'm as part of the referendum will have a project will hire project manager  and that person will be responsible for overseeing the various projects at each of the schools and giving an update to the board into the community so are our desires to be transparent here and to make sure that the communities informed as to them how we're proceeding if there construction in the spring ideally with a lot of the work taking place over the summer when students and staff are obviously not in the building ok ok sounds good so the summer eleventh the polls are open from seven am to eight pm correct and we