Has there ever been a more challenging time to prepare young people to enter and engage with the world they will be living in? That’s the job of the Princeton Public Schools, and Superintendent Steve Cochrane has some ideas about how to do it.

“The reality is, we live in a post-Ferguson, post-Dallas, post-Nice world, and our students are looking to make sense of that world,” Mr. Cochrane said. “It’s our job to help them.”

“They want to have conversations about race, religion, and culture,” he continued, “and we have a responsibility to facilitate those conversations. We also have a responsibility as educators to explore our own understandings and biases about race and culture.”

Mr. Cochrane discussed the schools’ role in the troubled current day political climate, emphasizing the educational opportunities afforded by election-year political events. “Politics is often presented in sound bites,” he said. “We want our students to see past the sound bites and engage in a deeper degree of analysis.”

Asserting the public schools’ responsibility to prepare students to be active citizens, Mr. Cochrane stated, “The presidential election gives us a powerful vehicle through which we can do that.” He went on to explain, “As the election unfolds, we can help our students not only gain greater insight into key social, economic, and political issues, but also examine those issues in a balanced way. Through the election we can help our students better understand how a democracy works and how compromises are struck.”

In an interview by email, Mr. Cochrane went on to discuss the changing face of the athletics and physical education programs and recent recommendations of the Athletics 2.0 Committee.

Focusing on the core values of joy of sport, education through athletics, community pride, and athletic achievement; the athletic program “provides important opportunities for students to develop physically, socially, and ethically,” according to Mr. Cochrane.

Among many recommendations from the committee were the following: upgrading of the Community Park field and developing a new field, both in partnership with the Recreation Department; establishing new fields by closing and sodding over Walnut Lane to create a single campus between the middle school and the high school; providing artificial turf on the upper field at the high school and on the Valley Road field; improving the current turf field with electricity for concessions, a permanent concessions booth and permanent bathrooms; providing a locked fence around the turf fields to protect them from overuse; selling corporate advertising for display around the turf field; dedicating space for wrestling and fencing in a possible high school expansion; and developing consistent operational and financial guidelines for all booster clubs.

“With more than 1000 students participating in our athletics programs, 6-12, we wanted to elevate our efforts to provide the very best conditions for competing and, most importantly, for learning,” Mr. Cochrane said.

Recommendations from the Athletics 2.0 committee will go to the School Board for further discussion and possible action. Many of the proposed facility improvements would require a voter referendum. The recommendations have been shared with the Student Achievement Committee of the Board. Mr. Cochrane is meeting with them this week and will ask if they would like a presentation to the full Board.

Editor’s Note: As this article was going to press, Town Topics learned of the death of PHS Athletics Director John Miranda. Mr. Cochrane’s statement can be found in the accompanying page one story.