District Might Not Name Any More Schools After People: Report

PRINCETON, NJ — The Princeton Public School District is reportedly considering a policy that would forbid any school from being named after a person. This means the Riverside Elementary School will not be renamed after its longtime principal who died in February of last year. Bill Cirullo passed away on Feb. 15, 2016. He was the school's principal for 30 years.

The Princeton Public School District Board of Education introduced the policy at last week’s meeting, and it will be given final consideration early next year, the Princeton Packet reports. The school board believes the standard would be very high on naming the school after someone other than John Witherspoon, so it decided to leave things the way they are, according to the report. Bill Cirullo’s brother, Charles, told the newspaper he was disappointed by the decision.

Witherspoon was a founding father of the United States. He is a former president of Princeton University who helped shape the country. He served New Jersey in the Continental Congress, and was the only clergy member to sign the Declaration of Independence. The middle school is named after him.

Charles Cirullo was part of a group of teachers and other supporters who had asked the district to rename Riverside Elementary School "The William D. Cirullo Riverside School." Bill Cirullo graduated from the Princeton Public School District, which he first entered when he was in kindergarten. He went on to spend countless years as a teacher, coach and principal in the district that raised him.

"When you work with great people - when you work with visionaries" he once said, "it is like an endless riot of ideas and possibilities."

That "riot" resulted in a school garden, a turtle pond, a black box theater, a wonderfully diverse pre-school, and countless curriculum initiatives. As recently as 2015, Cirullo was bringing children together with a landscape designer to create a new playground.

While in school, he starred on the football and track teams at Princeton High School and later coached football and lacrosse at Princeton High School. He founded the Bobby Campbell Lacrosse Foundation, named in memory of a former player, to bring lacrosse to underprivileged youth, and he coached an adult lacrosse team in Princeton for a decade.

Attached image of Bill Cirullo previously provided by the Princeton Public School District