Areas of need within Haddonfield school facilities as identified by the local school board. Credit: Haddonfield Schools.
UPDATED: August 30, 2024 (7:30 p.m.) — Almost a year after tabling a proposed referendum to acquire the shuttered Kingsway Learning Center, the Haddonfield School District is gearing up for a new bond vote.
On Wednesday, the district launched a website with preliminary information about the question ahead of a special public meeting slated for September 4 in the Haddonfield Memorial High School library.
Without offering any financial details, the site describes district areas of need: accessibility, classroom space, building maintenance and safety, specialized learning and media centers, “athletics and auditoriums,” and early childhood education — the principal motivation behind the proposed Kingsway acquisition.
Adding Kingsway would have allowed the district to provide full-day pre-K and kindergarten education to Haddonfield families; however, the district had signaled that those goals weren’t its sole focus.
The list of institutional priorities that appears on its referendum website matches those enumerated by Haddonfield Superintendent of Schools Chuck Klaus in January 2024.
“The identified needs in those six buckets has not changed,” Klaus said Friday. “We’re looking at different ways to meet these needs.”
Perhaps the most noteworthy aim of the referendum remains its intended establishment of a full-day kindergarten program in town. It also would create new classroom spaces to facilitate additional programming, and develop athletic fields on an expanded Haddonfield Memorial High School campus.
However, without another purpose-built property like Kingsway identified in the borough, Klaus said “the challenges of finding a suitable location to establish a full-day pre-k program” were too significant to be overcome.
Instead, the district intends to explore partnerships with private childcare providers to create a pre-K program for Haddonfield families.
“Once we get through this, that’ll be the next thing,” Klaus said.
Haddonfield voters last passed a $35-million bond referendum in 2016 that made repairs to building envelopes, HVAC upgrades, improvements to the high school gym, track, and football stadium, and more. Prior to that, the district had passed a $9.27-million bond measure in 2004 and another in 1999.
“The last referendum was about bringing buildings back to good standard,” Klaus said. “Our promise to the community was ‘We won’t let that happen again.’ We’ve got to keep up good maintenance.”
In comparison, the forthcoming proposal “has got a lot more bite in the educational aspect,” the superintendent said.
Haddonfield Superintendent of Schools Chuck Klaus. Credit: Haddonfield Schools.
The facilities improvements will touch all five school buildings in the district, with efforts taken to maximize state financial aid and outside grant sources.
In 2023, Haddonfield School District was awarded $603,911 in school construction funding towards a $1.5-million roof repair through the state 2023 Regular Operating District (ROD) grant program.
Klaus said that the district intends to fund some of its infrastructure improvements through the New Jersey Energy Savings Improvement Program (ESIP), which aims to leverage enough energy savings to cover the borrowing costs of the repairs, Klaus said.
The timing of the referendum is also intended to mitigate the impact of tax increases by introducing the new measure as the borrowing from its 2000 initiative is retired.
If voters approve the upcoming proposal, “the new debt will begin as the old debt ends,” the district referendum site reads, which “would continue the investment in our buildings with the bonus of state aid.”
In 2020, Haddonfield School District also agreed to swap land it owned at Radnor Avenue fields for a segment of the Bancroft parcel owned by the Borough of Haddonfield adjacent to Haddonfield Memorial High School. Since that time, Board of Education officials have spoken about how to activate that space for the district.
Klaus said the district intends to put down a new athletic field on the parcel, but also noted that the work will entail preserving some historic structures on the property and the demolition of Cooley Hall, which is the responsibility of the municipality.
The site does not yet specify any potential household tax impact of the referendum. According to 2022 U.S. Census data, the estimated median home price in Haddonfield is around $623,900.
