At the Haddonfield Board of Education reorganization meeting on Jan. 8, re-elected members of the board were sworn in, a new vice president was named and the stance on the bond referendum was publicly announced.
Back in November, Haddonfield voters re-elected Glenn Moramarco, Heather Paoli and Michael Drew Hansen to the board. All ran unopposed. Moramarco was voted unanimously in as president of the board once again. However, a new vice president was chosen to take over for Andrew Berlin, who is leaving the board due to new work obligations. The new vice president, also unanimously voted upon, is Hansen.
Berlin presumably wanted to leave quietly, however Moramarco felt he deserved more recognition for his contributions to the school district.
“I would like to say how delightful it has been to be able to work with him in the past and what a big loss it is going to be for the board. He always brings an interesting perspective to every issue. He has strengths that in a lot of ways are completely different from us. He has taught me a lot. I’m sure he is going to still be supportive of the schools, but we are going to miss his day-to-day help. We will sorely miss him,” Moramarco said.
Paoli also praised Berlin for his contributions to the board as well as his role in implementing and spearheading technology for students, helping to get them iPads, airliners and smart boards.
“We had a very large technology plan because of your help and vision, so thank you,” Paoli said.
Berlin thanked members of the board for all their time together, specifically Superintendent Richard Perry who worked with him on many issues and concerns. He said though he will be leaving, he’ll be around in the audience on occasion.
“It has been a privilege and pleasure to work with all of you. And, unfortunately, changes in people’s lives don’t always connect with election boundaries. I am looking forward to talking with people and staying friends and volunteering from time to time with things I can help with,” Berlin said.
The open position will be announced to the public and the board will advertise for a member of the community to assume the rest of his term.
About being re-elected as president, Moramarco said it is an honor and a privilege to serve such a high-performing district, and the community has been very supportive, which has made his job easier. In the future, he hopes to keep getting better and help keep the budget manageable for the community.
“It’s always a challenge with such a high-performing district to get even better, but that is always our goal. And we would like to keep the budget as manageable for the citizens as we can, consistent with the high quality that we have all come to expect,” Moramarco said.
On being the new vice president, Hansen hopes to keep up the work the board has been doing. Operating collaboratively to come up with collective solutions to problems and concerns is something he would like to make sure they continue doing.
“I’m very proud to be chosen as vice president. I’ve been on the board for about eight years, and it’s been a pleasure to work with so many different board members over the years. Andy was doing such a fabulous job, and with his departure, it presented a unique opportunity to step in, and I felt like it was another opportunity to serve the community, the children and the schools,” Hansen said.
Also during the meeting, Perry and Moramarco spoke about the Capital Projects Initiatives, which were going to be a two-question bond referendum to get ROD grants from the state for improvements to the schools. It was decided the school district would not pursue the grants, so there will be no need for a referendum. The board made the decision from comments and concerns of the public about not enough time as well as not enough information about what exactly was being fixed or improved upon in schools.
“We decided to back off on the ROD grants and actually take a better scrutiny in terms of maintenance of our facilities and operations and possibly seek alternative state funding down the road, so thank you, public, for all of your input that helped us make that decision,” Perry said.
“We’re basically going to go through the proposal system by system. First, we’re going to go through the rooms. When we’re done with rooms, we’re going to look at the boilers. When we’re done the boilers, we’ll look at the electrical systems. Pretty much going through each system one by one so it is more manageable. Then we’ll come back to the board and the community once we are really confident we have a package that we’re all comfortable with,” Moramarco said.
According to the board president, it is the board’s hope to seek funding through the debt service and that should get the schools all or maybe more benefit than the ROD program they were originally going to use.
The next Board of Education meeting will be on Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Haddonfield Memorial High School Library.
