PHS joins Three Rivers

PRINCETON — The Princeton High School will have a new home for its athletic program.

At this week’s meeting, the PHS Board unanimously accepted an invitation to the join the Three Rivers Athletic Conference beginning with the 2013-14 school year.

PHS Superintendent Kirk said it was a great opportunity for PHS to join a well-established conference in which PHS has had some natural rivals in past years, adding the new association will also allow PHS to renew some rivalries which have disappeared during the years. The PHS coaches support the movement to join the Three Rivers Conference, Haring said.

Board member Gary Coates also expressed his support for joining Three Rivers, saying he was glad to have a home and to be part of a conference which is larger than three schools. PHS already plays several of the schools in the conference, he said.

In other business at Wednesday’s meeting, Principal Barb Schmidt reviewed the progress being made by PHS staff to implement the Common Core Standards at the school. The teachers in the divisions team worked on the common core standards and writing common assessments for each class. This has been an ongoing process which will continue throughout the year. She hopes to have common assessment in place to begin piloting by next year.

When contacted Thursday, Schmidt said the Illinois State Board of Education adopted new math and English language arts standards in 2010 for K‐12 education. Implementing these new Common Core Standards is a huge project involving more than 30 states which have agreed to adopt the same basic standards and assessments rather than each state doing its own thing. These standards are much more skills based, which is already what PHS has focused on for several years, Schmidt said.

What makes them a challenge for most districts, especially for K-8, is the expectations are very different than what the previous standards were. For example, Schmidt said the benchmark will eventually be for all eighth-graders to have Algebra. PHS obviously won’t be able to base its curriculum on that until the elementary district has moved in that direction. That clearly takes more than a two-year implementation process, Schmidt said.