By Wendy Greenberg
Students in the Princeton Public Schools (PPS) district are enjoying the waning days of summer before reporting back to school on Monday, August 31, an early start before Labor Day.
Ninth graders going into Princeton High School (PHS) already attended orientation on Monday, August 24, for buildings tours, meeting the administrative staff, and getting schedules.
Faculty and staff have begun the new semester with professional development beginning on Tuesday August 25, with new Littlebrook Elementary School Principal Lisa Caudill replacing Luis Ramirez.
Upon return, the school grounds will look a little different.
“We have construction taking place in every building in the district right now,” said PPS Superintendent Michael LaSusa at the August 18 School Board meeting. “For the most part we’re right on track with the site work … we have to keep the foot on the accelerator a little bit, but there’s a lot of progress made at Littlebrook, at Johnson Park, and at Riverside (elementary schools).”
In a letter LaSusa recently sent to district families, he addressed what he called the “big-ticket items” and said that the site work at Johnson Park, Riverside, and a portion of the Littlebrook campuses should be completed by August 28.
“The larger projects at Princeton Middle School, Community Park, Littlebrook, and Princeton High School will all continue through the school year,” he wrote. “We know that there will be disruptions to routines and need for ongoing adjustments as we proceed through phases of work, so thank you for your flexibility as we make these long-term improvements to our schools.”
Building principals will keep families informed of changes in drop-off or pick-up locations, and other changes brought about by construction.
All students will be affected by the district-wide goal this year of reducing the amount of time students spend on devices and screens while they are at school, LaSusa said.
“This is not simple to do, as we currently utilize a diverse range of platforms that have become integral to instruction, accessibility, and learning,” he wrote. “At the same time, however, we are familiar with the research regarding excessive device and social media use, the decline in time spent reading books, and other emerging evidence about how we all are affected by the screens in our hands.”
PPS, he continued, has “taken a host of measures as a district to prevent the misuse of technology among students and leverage technology for legitimate
learning purposes. This has included installing restrictions on YouTube access, implementing filtering and content monitoring tools, and removing devices from kindergarten and first grade classrooms.”
Students will need to follow a state-mandated bell-to-bell cell phone ban. High school students will get details on how this will play out. Additionally, one day each marking period (quarterly) will be dedicated to unplugging or disconnecting.
“These days will look different depending on the grade level, but they may include a focus on play, planning lessons that do not rely on student devices, allowing students ‘face time’ to meet with teachers or other students to catch up on work, and so on,” said LaSusa. Each principal will provide more details.
PPS is also eliminating iPad and Chromebook use during indoor recess at the K-5 level. “This may entail a return to games like Othello, Candyland, Boggle, Chutes and Ladders, Stratego, Connect Four, and others that some of us born in the Gen-X era might recall, while lamenting that there just isn’t enough time for Risk or Monopoly during indoor recess,” states the letter.
The goal is a “universal norm” where “the lid of every Chromebook and laptop must be closed when a class or lesson begins, and remain closed unless and until the teacher instructs students to open them for a specified learning activity.”
LaSusa wrote that the district and Board will continue to discuss and evaluate use of technology, “especially as AI now advances into every facet of life.”
The letter also reiterates that the Board of Education has adopted an activity fee at PHS and Princeton Middle School (PMS) to generate revenue in order to avoid reducing extracurricular activities as a result of budgetary pressures. The fees, $150 at PHS and $100 at PMS, can be paid through MySchoolBucks, which is linked online from the letter, which is posted on the superintendent’s page on princetonk12.org.
Starting school before Labor Day is a statewide trend that the Board seems to want to continue. The calendar presented at the August Board meeting for the school year 2027-2028 has the first day of school for students on Monday, August 30, with the school year ending on Friday, June 9, 2028, which would be high school graduation — designating only seven student attendance days that June. (The school calendar must schedule 180 student attendance days each school year, and most districts plan for inclement weather.)
This coming year (2026-2027), the final day of school will be June 16, as planned now.
“We are very excited to be able to start school this early, and we wouldn’t be able to do this without the collaboration we have with our teachers union, so we’re very grateful for that,” said School Board President Dafna Kendal at the meeting.
“I’m excited to have the opportunity to end school a little earlier,” said Board Vice President Susan Kanter. The presented calendar, she said, “tries to provide reasonable breaks for the students and also encourages their best learning.”
Board members seemed to like the idea of planning ahead, and Adam Bierman called it “proactive.”
LaSusa said that starting before labor Day “gives us much more flexibility during the rest of the school year, and it helps us end the school year prior to roughly Juneteenth (June 19). But the earlier we end the year, the better it is from an instructional point of view.”
Having the last day of school earlier than usual, he said, “could be a real help to us because that summer (of 2028) … is when much of our construction is supposed to be wrapping up. The final end date of some of the construction is December 28 (2028), but we know that we will probably have certain milestones that we will want to hit that summer in order for certain buildings and spaces to be usable for students and staff in the fall of ’28.”
Adopting the calendar with an early end of the school year “will give us more flexibility to hopefully pick off the remaining work and have as many useable parts of our facilities available to students and staff that fall,” said LaSusa.
Kendal brought up a concern about child care between the end of school and when summer camps and activities usually begin. LaSusa said the district would contact aftercare vendors to set up arrangements.
The 2027-2028 calendar will be brought up for approval at a future Board meeting.
The next public School Board meetings are on Tuesday September 22, and Tuesday, October 27, both at 7 p.m.