Haddonfield Superintendent of Schools Chuck Klaus. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
Haddonfield voters will head to the polls December 10 to cast their ballots on a $46-million bond referendum that would bring big changes to every building in the borough school district.
The Haddonfield Board of Education (BOE) approved the measure for referendum in a special meeting last Wednesday, in which Superintendent of Schools Chuck Klaus laid out the details of the plan.
The district has spent nearly two years readying the ballot question, Klaus said, and after failing to hit its marks earlier this year in a plan to acquire the former Kingsway Learning Center, took some months to regroup.
The latest plan will touch every building in the district, adding classroom space and accessibility solutions at Central, Elizabeth Haddon, and J. Fithian Tatem Elementary Schools, making improvements to auditoriums and athletic facilities at Haddonfield Middle and Memorial High Schools, and leverage a land carve-out from the former Bancroft School site to create a multimillion-dollar athletics complex on Hopkins Lane.
It will also support the creation of a full-day kindergarten program for borough residents. Full-day pre-K, which had been a stated goal of the Kingsway purchase, will no longer be feasible to approach in the new plan.
The total cost for the work is estimated at some $46.69 million, but the local share is estimated to be less than that. More than $26.497 million of the work is eligible for state aid equivalent to 40 percent of the debt service to complete it, which would knock about $10.598 million off the total.
However, Haddonfield BOE Business Administrator Michael Catalano calculated that the district can only count on about $9.009 million in aid, given that “for the last 13 years, the state has consistently decided to fund 85 percent of the 40 percent debt service aid obligation,” Catalano wrote in an e-mail.
That would bring the local share of the total down from $46.69 million to about $37.683 million, which would be directly financed by Haddonfield taxpayers. For a household assessed at the borough average of $530,509, the board calculates that the cost of the work will raise taxes about $369 annually for a 30-year bond.
If approved, construction would begin next summer, and would see completion along a three-to-five-year timeline.
In introducing the measure at the September 4 meeting, Klaus described the work as building capacity in district classrooms, supplementing accessibility for all students, staff, and guests; and supporting specialized education.
“We’re going for full accessibility, which is a great thing for all our families and staff,” the superintendent said.
In support of that aim, elementary school campuses will receive new playgrounds, sidewalks, and parking.
Haddonfield Schools proposed renovations to Tatem Elementary. Credit: Haddonfield Schools.
An elevator will be added to Elizabeth Haddon to access a planned second story with a media center and new classrooms and offices below.
Tatem Elementary will similarly get a new media center, more classrooms, and specialized learning spaces for art, music, and flexible small-group instruction.
ADA accessibility will also be prioritized with the addition of a chairlift and companion seating at the Haddonfield Memorial High School (HMHS) stadium, and improve access to the serving line at the Haddonfield Middle School (HMS) cafeteria.
If the work is completed as proposed, the only ADA-inaccessible space in the district facilities will be the current art room at Elizabeth Haddon, which will become a flex space, Klaus said.
Central Elementary School will add two more classrooms and small-group instructional space, as well as a dedicated guidance and counseling suite, by converting the former BOE offices into additional instructional space.
“Our enrollment is going up,” Klaus said. “Currently, we have 15 or 16 students from Central and Tatem who are attending Haddon because we don’t have enough classrooms for students. Central grades one two and three are at capacity.
“We need more room,” the superintendent said. “All elementary schools will have at least 23 classrooms, dedicated art and music rooms, and two flex spaces that can be used for language, science, gifted and talented, and/or additional classrooms.”
More students “are coming, we’re taking them, and they’ll do well,” he said.
“We’ll educate them. That’s what we do.”
If the most recent bond referendum in 2016 “was all about repair,” Klaus said, this one will finish off that work, replacing all windows and cupola roofing in the district, which would mean “by the time we’re done with this, all our roofs will be good until the 2040s.”
Proposed Haddonfield Schools Hopkins Athletic Complex. Credit: Haddonfield Schools.
Flooring containing mercury will be removed, and select areas of stairwells, corridors, and parking will all be restored.
Outdated mechanical and electrical systems in auditoriums will be addressed, as will asbestos plaster walls and broken chairs.
More seating would also be added to the HMS auditorium to accommodate full-school assemblies and performances.
All schools will receive new fire alarm systems, and HMHA will add a new and enlarged security vestibule within its building envelops, with a transaction window and separate door for its attendance office.
Perhaps the most ambitious physical improvement of the plan would be to create the “Hopkins Athletic Complex,” a separate, competition-sized gymnasium with an auxiliary wrestling room, turf field, and parking lot on a piece of the former Bancroft School parcel. That would require the district to relocate and restore a pair of historic buildings on the site, amid the borough-funded demolition of Cooley Hall.
“When we did our visioning sessions a couple years ago, one of the overwhelming messages we got from the community was they wanted this area to be accessible to the community, not just the schools,” Klaus said.
“The school will put in turf fields; the referendum will put lighting and parking around it. If we can practice two teams on our two different turf fields, we estimate that you get 27 hours more time on the youth fields than you do now.
“The goal is to get kids practicing after school, and then being able to go home.”
Klaus also said the district has received offers to partner on developing Lullworth Hall, but “right now we don’t know programmatically what we’ll do with it.
“If we take that giant parcel of Hopkins land and put in the additional lit field with all the parking and a competitive sized gym, and maybe Lullworth Hall, we can secure that space for the high school,” he said.
Finally, the full-day kindergarten program would help Haddonfield become one of the few districts — Klaus counted five statewide — that do not have full-day kindergarten. Doing so would add about 135 more hours to that current program, which means more time for academic and social development.
“This should be a time of joy and learning,” the superintendent said. “It’s adding weeks to a school year. It’s critical and one of our biggest missions.”
For more information about the bond measure, visit the district website, and stick with NJPEN for updates.
