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WHITE continued from Page 5 and Ewing Public Schools.

“The diversity of this community is amazing,” he said. “You go to Ewing schools and you’ll find people who are not so well off and you’ll find wealthy folks. You’ll find every religious group. You’ll find every ethnic group.

“When my daughters went to college they had to go to diversity classes. Sara told me that she could have taught them (hersef). I think that it’s a strength of our community, because going through the schools, the kids learn to deal with everybody.”

White said that he believed the Ewing Public Schools does a good job of providing opportunities for all kids .

“It doesn’t matter where the kid is coming from,” he said. “We have kids going to the best colleges in the country. We have kids going into the military and into the trades. We also have worked hard to maintain activities and events for everybody. In some districts you’ve only got sports. Here, if a student wants to get involved, there’s an activity out there for them.”

He said that another strength was that the district “has a lot of people working hard—teachers, administrators, School Board members, kids—to take all these people with all these different backgrounds and merge them together. It’s really a microcosm of America. This is the America of the future.”

White was also a strong advocate of urging parents to become more involved with their children and their education.

“It’s a challenge in a lot of districts,” he said. “You go back to the old analogy— education is three-legged stool. You’ve got to have the kid, you’ve got to have the parent and you’ve got to have the teacher. If they’re all working together, then the kid’s going to perform regardless of what the background is.

“We have to educate some of the parents here about their responsibility. That’s not an easy task. Sometimes you might have parents who did not have a favorable educational experience, so they have little or no use for school. That might be a factor.

“You might have someone who is not familiar with the American education system. If you go to a country like Japan or Germany, you go to class and you’re lectured, and they don’t want to see the parents. You take a test and that’s it. In America, we want the involvement of the parents.”

He added: “What’s the difference between West Windsor-Plainsboro and Trenton High? In West Windsor, you’ve got a heavy, active parental involvement, maybe to the point of intrusive. On the other hand, my wife taught Junior I in the City of Trenton. They’d have PTA nights and only two parents would show up. And the parents weren’t involved with their kids. You’ve gotta have that component. That’s where your success is. Ask any teacher what’s going to make the difference, and they’re going to tell you that it’s having that parent there working with you.”

White also said that as a former principal at a technical school, he believed that there needs to be more emphasis placed on the trades as viable career options.

“Ben Franklin said, ‘He that hath a trade, hath an estate.’ But you know what? Parents don’t want their kids doing that. It’s something we fought continually in tech school,” White said. Let me tell you, I can point to kids who are multimillionaires. They found a niche and have very, very successful businesses.”

According to the school district’s statement, one of things White enjoyed the most was the early mornings.

“You could catch Bruce out front of his home in the Village on the Green at the crack of dawn tending to his lawn and landscape, or catch him in his front window reading the many newspapers delivered to his home, always keeping current with local and world events.

“Starting his days early, you might run into him at the Home Depot or find him at the Golden Nugget Flea market on Wednesday, Saturdays and Sundays sharing a coffee, a few tidbits and, without a doubt, a joke with various dealers. There was possibly the of making a deal or two, being Bruce was an antique’s proprietor and a collector.

“But his passion was education, equal education for all. He wanted us all to join him in creating a vibrant Ewing Township community, the place where he grew up, raised his family, and continued to support, until his passing.”