Whatever the permanent name of the Princeton Unified Middle School may become, current and prospective middle school students should have their say in choosing it.
That’s why school district officials have directed Princeton Unified Middle School Principal Jason Burr to poll students in grades 5-8 – again – to recommend a name to the Princeton Public Schools Board of Education, which will decide on the new name at its June 15 meeting.
The middle school on Walnut Lane had been known as the John Witherspoon Middle School until a petition – signed by more than 1,500 people – was submitted to the school board last year that requested a name change. The school board agreed to change the name, and set June 15 as the deadline to act.
The initial list of proposed names for the grades 6-8 middle school included individuals, as well as generic names for the middle school. A series of polls – two conducted among middle school students and one poll for community members – revealed a preference for a generic name, in contrast to naming it for a person.
The list of generic names in the final poll – to be conducted among students in grades 5-8 and middle school staff – are Princeton Community Middle School, Walnut Lane Middle School, Princeton United Middle School, Princeton Middle School and The Princeton Middle School.
The students and staff will rank their choices in order of preference – 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 – to help the school board in making its decision. The first-ranked school name gets 5 points, the second-ranked gets 4 points and all the way down to the fifth-place choice, which gets 1 point.
The name with the most points will win.
At school board’s May 25 meeting, school board member Dafna Kendal favored holding another poll among students and staff, with the votes to be tallied by June 4. She said she wanted to know how the students felt about the five generic names for the middle school.
School board members debated the finer points of the five proposed names – whether it is a community school, the impact of the school’s initials on public and student perceptions, and whether it should follow the geography model in naming a school, such as the Littlebrook School and the Riverside School – in the Littlebrook and Riverside neighborhoods, respectively.
“We can kick this can down the road forever. We need to make a decision,” school board member Michelle Tuck Ponder said, reminding the school board that “ultimately” it must choose a name.
When the meeting was opened for public comment, parent Jennifer Cohan said the petition was the impetus for the name change, but there was more to the story that led to the petition.
Cohan outlined the “origin story” that led to the planned name change, and said she wants it to be included in the school district curriculum and communications.
Cohan said the movement to change the name began in June 2020 in a private Facebook group for Black parents whose children enrolled in the Princeton Public Schools.
A White mother – who Cohan identified as herself – posted on the Facebook page about Woodrow Wilson’s name being removed from a building in another town and asked whether anyone was interested in renaming the John Witherspoon Middle School.
John Witherspoon was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the early presidents of Princeton University. He was a slave owner.
The middle school, however, was not explicitly named for John Witherspoon. It is the latest in a series of schools that incorporates “Witherspoon” in its name – beginning with the Witherspoon Street School that was built in 1872 in the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood. It was a successor to the first school to teach Black children, organized by former slave Betsey Stockton in the 1830s.
Meanwhile, Cohan said a Black mother expressed interest in changing the name of the middle school and that she and the Black mother agreed to work on it. Princeton High School graduate Geoffrey Allen began the petition with a multi-racial group of friends and gathered more than 1,500 signatures on the petition, which requested a name change.
“Why is this important? Because it’s really important that a White person realized something needed to be changed, but they should not be the center of that – that it should be led by Black people because it affected them directly,” Cohan told the school board.
Ashante Thompson, whose child attends the middle school and who works at the middle school, praised Burr and school district officials for their hard work and for understanding the reasons why the name of the middle school had to be changed.
“This has been a collaborative effort with Black, White, blue (and) green community members. I just want to say wholeheartedly that Black voices were heard and they have been respected throughout this process,” Thompson said.
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