The New Trier High School board unanimously agreed this week to rename one building in the Northfield freshman campus for the first principal to lead the building after it reopened in 2001.
School board members on Monday approved the recommendation from their naming committee to rename Northfield’s B building after the late Jan Borja.
Borja died in February 2012 following a lengthy battle with cancer, according to a previous Pioneer Press story.
“Jan had many gifts that she contributed to New Trier,” Superintendent Linda Yonke said when she announced the recommendation. “Her greatest gift was creating this freshman campus.”
Reopening Northfield as a freshman-only operation was controversial at the time, and one of the last options people were willing to consider as they decided how to deal with student population needs, Yonke said. Despite that, Borja and her team spent a year preparing the campus with ninth grade students and their development in mind, she said.
The resulting welcoming atmosphere benefited Borja’s staff as well as students, Yonke said.
She told the audience that a teacher who had briefly worked at the Northfield campus said to her after being there, “There really is a hug line” outside Borja’s office, because Borja was so apt to hug staff members and others while interacting with them.
“She loved freshmen, she loved thinking about a good freshman year should look like, and she loved community,” current Northfield campus principal Paul Waechtler said.
Yonke said naming Northfield’s B building after Borja made sense because it houses the principal’s office and the advisers’ office, both titles Borja carried during her New Trier career. It also houses the district’s employee daycare operation, a program for which Borja had repeatedly advocated, Yonke said.
According to Pioneer Press, Borja retired in 2011 after spending more than 40 years at New Trier as a teacher and leader, including a final decade as the Northfield principal.
Before that, she served as advisory chair for freshman and sophomore girls, and was also chair of the modern and classical languages department, a Pioneer Press story said at the time she announced her retirement. She was initially hired as a German and Spanish teacher in 1970, a New Trier official said at the time.
Board member Carol Ducommun said she worked with Borja both before and during Ducommun’s previous terms on the school board: “She really was all about the needs of students, not just their academic needs.”
Board member Lori Goldstein said naming the B Building after Borja was “a slam-dunk.”
New Trier will hold a naming ceremony in September, Yonke said.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy
More Top Picks Solar Panels