When Ronald and Alisa Schlosser moved to West Windsor some 18 years ago, the West Windsor-Plainsboro High School was just starting its ascent toward becoming one of the best schools in the state.##M:[more]##
At the time, there was only one high school, and it was just fine for the Schlossers’ daughter, Alicia, who graduated in 1989 after spending her junior and senior years in WW-P.
But as the district’s reputation grew, so did the number of school children pouring into the district. For the Schlossers’ son Alex — 16 years younger than his sister — WW-P had become a very different place. Although the district was rated among the top in the state, it had also become among the most populous.
Alex did well in his eight years in WW-P, despite the fact that he attended five different schools, both as a result of a district redistricting and a move across town from the West Windsor Estates development to Princeton Oaks. He liked the public schools he was attending, had many friends, and was a straight A student. He was also involved in extracurricular activities, such as serving on the student council.
Despite his success, when it came time to go to high school, Alex and his parents felt that WW-P might be too big. “We didn’t believe that WW-P was deteriorating academically,” says Alisa Schlosser. “We wanted Alex to go to a school where he wasn’t just another number.”
“Alex actually came to us and said it was something he wanted to explore,” she adds. “He had a friend across the street who was going to Lawrenceville School, and another kid in neighborhood was going to Peddie.”
The family decided to investigate private school options in the area, and ultimately settled on Peddie School in Hightstown, where Alex, 18, is now a senior.
Between them, the Schlossers had experienced both ends of the schooling spectrum. While Ronald, who is the CEO of Thomson Learning in Lawrenceville, went to public high school, Alicia, a stay-at-home mom, attended Catholic school.
“Maybe we should have considered private school more when my daughter went to school,” says Schlosser, “but when it came time for Alex to go to high school we wanted to look at all the options. Our main reason for deciding to send Alex to Peddie came down to the size of the school, which is just over 500 students.”
By comparison, the 2005 senior class at High School South alone was 353 students. “In the years we’ve lived in West Windsor, we’ve seen the district really, really grow. We had concerns. Not that the quality of education has gone down, but that the district has grown too large.”
“Our secondary reason for going to Peddie over WW-P was class size,” Schlosser says. “There are only 11 or 12 children in each of Alex’s classes. When you are in a class with fewer children, there’s no hiding. Every student has to participate.”
Although student population was the main reason for sending Alex to Peddie, other benefits quickly became apparent. One was the faculty. “Alex is a boarding student at Peddie, and we soon found that the faculty are extremely dedicated. They are available 24/7. Most of the faculty lives there and their children grow up there. We have found them to be very caring and concerned.”
Unlike private schools where guidance counselors are assigned hundreds of students, at Peddie each counselor works with only a handful of kids. “My son has an advisor and each advisor works with about eight students. They meet with the kids on a regular basis both during and outside the school day. She has even had the kids over for pizza parties.”
Peddie also has a community service requirement for its students, which Schlosser feels is very important. “I think it instills in the kids a need to give back to the community. During his sophomore year, Alex was involved with Habitat for Humanity. The school also has a Community Service Day where the campus is opened to various organizations and the kids get a chance to volunteer to work with them.”
“We think going to Peddie has made him a well rounded student,” Schlosser says. His extracurricular activities include running on the cross country team, involvement with the school play, and participation in the Model United Nations program.
This summer, Alex was one of 13 students taking part in Peddie’s Summer Signature Series. As part of the project he served a four-week stint as an intern in the office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC. This month he is finishing the program by working in the office of state Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein.
While in Washington, Alex attended a speech given by President Bush on Medicare, and met United States Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona. In July he went on a 13-day trip to Europe (the Hague, Brussels and Paris), attending a National Student Leadership Conference, Diplomacy Abroad.
According to his mother, Alex plans on pursuing political science in college and hopes to go to law school. “He’s always been very interested in politics, but I don’t think he wants to be a politician.”
Alex has not decided what college he wants to attend, but is looking at smaller liberal arts schools that offer a diverse education in case he decides not to pursue a law career, his mother says.
One of the drawbacks of living at Peddie is that many of the friends Alex makes at the school don’t live in the area. For example, two of his roommates were from South Korea. But, Schlosser adds, boarding at school has afforded Alex opportunities he would have never gotten if he had attended the public school system. Living with international students gave him an opportunity to learn about their culture and country. Living at Peddie also helped him prepare for when he goes away to college.
“He has really grown up a lot,” says Schlosser. “Alex loves it there. It’s a very close knit community.
The Cohens at Hun
In 1988, when Leslie and Larry Cohen moved from the Woodbridge area to central New Jersey, Plainsboro was practically a no-brainer as a place to live. Taxes were low, it was close to the train station for Larry’s commute to Manhattan, and the school district was superb.
Whiles taxes, not even in Plainsboro, are no longer low, other things have gotten better. Larry now has a much easier commute — by car to his office at the Fox Rothschild law firm in Lawrenceville. And the school system — particularly at the high school level — has achieved even higher ratings. Yet the Cohens have chosen to send their daughter Jessica, a rising senior, and son Daniel, a rising freshman, to the private Hun School instead of High School North.
With a tuition of $24,”000 per student, the choice was no minor matter for the Cohens, both public school graduates. “WW-P is very large,” explains Leslie Cohen, “and we were looking for a small, more personal, but still academically challenging environment.”
And, she explains, Hun offered some features that made it especially attractive. Unlike some of the private schools, it has no classes on Saturdays, which means that the children keep the same school schedule as their public school friends. And only about 30 percent of the students are boarders, so the Cohen kids fit right in as day students.
Hun works for the Cohens, even though the children are “two opposites,” according to their mother. Daniel is into sports, plays travel soccer, and is not as motivated academically as his older sister. Leslie thinks he will benefit from the smaller class sizes at the private school. She likes the idea of Hun’s five-day a week after-school help period when all teachers are available to work individually with students. “You’re encouraged to use this time for academics,” she says, “and none of the sports begin until after the extra-help period.”
Jessica is already an accomplished dancer, who was accepted into the jazz program at the School of Jacob’s Pillow in the Berkshires and who attended the Governor’s School of the Arts dance division during the summer. She is also active in Princeton Dance Theater and helped create last year’s production of “The Nutcracker.” But, her mother reports, when she began high school she was a “quiet” child and “we thought she would thrive if we put her into a smaller environment.” A place like Hun will help a shy student who might not put herself into the spotlight in front of the class. “But in a small environment like this,” says Leslie Cohen, where some of the classes have as few as six students, “they can’t get lost.”
Both the Cohen children will have to meet Hun’s community service commitment. Jessica already volunteers at the hospital, and Daniel “is working on” choosing an activity. Says Leslie: “I think they are getting more than an education there.”
The Hun dress code turns out to be another ingredient of private school life that the Cohen parents also find appealing. “Boys have to wear a shirt and tie and dress pants,” says Leslie. “And girls wear collared, button down shirts with dress slacks or knee length dress. There is no dyed hair or body piercing. It takes the pressure off the parents to enforce their own dress code and it takes the pressure off the kids.”
But not entirely. Daniel, reports his mother, has had to spend some time learning to tie a tie.
