West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District


The West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District is a comprehensive high achieving regional public school district in New Jersey, United States, serving students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade from West Windsor Township and Plainsboro Township. There are four elementary schools, two upper elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools. Niche.com listed the district as third best in New Jersey, and 55th best in the nation, according to its 2018 Best Schools ranking.
As of the 2017-18 school year, the district and its 10 schools had an enrollment of 9,812 students and 761.6 classroom teachers, for a student–teacher ratio of 12.9:1.
The district is classified by the New Jersey Department of Education as being in District Factor Group "J", the-highest of eight groupings. District Factor Groups organize districts statewide to allow comparison by common socioeconomic characteristics of the local districts. From lowest socioeconomic status to highest, the categories are A, B, CD, DE, FG, GH, I and J.

History

The West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District was the result of the 1969 merger of two separate, neighboring school districts - the Plainsboro School District and the West Windsor School District - as both towns were starting to grow rapidly. The districts merged so that they could accommodate the increasing number of students newly enrolling.
With a decline in the number of student athletes playing football at WW-P North that would be inadequate for the school to field a team of its own, the district attempted to combine the teams from the two schools to have them operate as a single co-operative football team for the 2017-18 school year based at South HS. Given that the size of the schools is larger than the threshold established by the state for co-op programs, the proposal was rejected by the West Jersey Football League and by the Leagues and Conferences Committee of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, before an appeal of the decision was rejected by the Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education. In August 2017, the district announced that WW-P North would cancel its program. The members of the canceled program will be eligible to play for the North junior varsity football team, but will not be able to play for the South team.

Awards and recognition

The West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District is one of the top achieving districts in New Jersey. The high schools have held first to fifth places in many of the state's rankings. In 2004, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North was ranked #1 in the state of New Jersey by New Jersey Monthly magazine and West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South was ranked #5. West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South was the 9th ranked public high school, and North was 18th-ranked, in New Jersey out of 316 schools statewide, in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2006 cover story on the state's Top Public High Schools.
West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South was recognized during the 1992-93 school year, and Maurice Hawk Elementary School was recognized during the 1993-94 school year, with the National Blue Ribbon Award of Excellence from the United States Department of Education, the highest honor that an American school can achieve.
West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North was recognized in the 2006-07 school year with the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence by the U.S. Department of Education, the highest award an American school can receive.
In both the 2004-05 and 2006-07 school years, the Community Middle School Science Olympiad team was first in the country. They were also Science Olympiad state and regional champions for the past 15 or so years. However, Thomas R. Grover Middle School beat Community Middle School in the 2019-2020 States competition, but did not compete in Nationals due to COVID-19 cancellations.
The West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District supports FIRST Robotics Competition Team #1923, , which welcomes students from both high schools. The team has been competing since 2006, and mentors FIRST programs across all grade levels in the district, as well as internationally. The team has won four regional competitions including, 2009 New Jersey Regional, 2011 Connecticut Regional, 2017 Mount Olive District, and 2017 Montgomery District. They have been recognized with various awards for community outreach & spreading the mission of FIRST, and has received individual recognitions for both students and mentors on the team's leadership & effective communication within the scope of the FIRST Robotics Competition. The MidKnight Inventors, Team #1923, has made it to the First Robotics Competition World Championships six years since 2006 when they first began competing. In 2015, at the FIRST Championship in St. Louis, Missouri, The MidKnight Inventors finished 3rd, out of the 3,000 teams that competed in the FRC competition.

Controversy

West Windsor-Plainsboro is notable for its ongoing divide over the school district's harsh implementation of academics on its students. The controversy comes amidst Superintendent of Schools David Aderhold's plan to ease the high school curriculum following reports of students having been referred for psychological evaluation and even hospitalization for excessive stress. According to a New York Times article written by author Kyle Spencer, the divide appears to be somewhat racial, as the area has a high Asian-American population, such as Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students. Some parents have argued that such change "dumbs down" the students and hinders their overall academic experience. Other parents believe the children are stressed out to an unhealthy degree. It has been argued that placing too much stress on academics with the intent of going to a good college is wrong, as colleges are more interested in projects and student-led activities than grades alone. The high schools within the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District have been outlined as prep or pre-college institutions, rather than as public high schools. Some have noted that the Asian parents are simply trying to boost their children into the middle class. However, there were many that did not fall along the racial divide.
An ongoing, parallel controversy in the district has consisted of students, teachers, and alumni who allege that the administrators and parents of the district over-emphasize funding for and teaching of STEM at the expense of the humanities, arts, and sometimes languages. Attempts to cut language programs, including German and Latin, have ignited controversy and led to allegations that the school district under-prepares students to study non-STEM fields or to work outside of the United States.

Schools

Schools in the district are:
;Lower elementary schools
;Upper elementary schools
;Middle schools
;High schools
The district is governed by a nine-member Board of Education, consisting of five members from West Windsor and four from Plainsboro. Members are elected to three-year terms by residents of the respective townships. Current board members are:
Members of the district administration are: