The Haddonfield board of education held a special meeting on Sept. 4 to provide an overview of its bond referendum priorities.
The board opted to remove a turf field from the referendum question before unanimously approving submission of a bond proposal question to school district voters in a special election next month.
The bond referendum will cover the following priorities, in alphabetical order: accessibility, additional classroom space, improvements to auditorium and athletic spaces, building maintenance and safety, early-childhood education and improvements to specialized learning spaces and media centers.
The full board presentation can be viewed on the district’s YouTube channel.
During his overview regarding new classroom space, Superintendent Chuck Klaus explained that increasing enrollment numbers warrant the addition.
“We need more room,” he said. “There’s some development going on around town. Snowden, The Place at Haddonfield will be finished in six to eight months. That’s 20 units, and Ellis will shortly follow after that with 19 units, and then Bancroft, 120 units. They’re all coming.
“We’re taking the students,” Klaus added. “But in order to do this to the best of our capabilities, we need the space to do that.”
When construction is done, all three elementary schools are expected to have at least 23 instructional spaces broken into 19 classrooms, enough for full-day kindergarten at each building, three classrooms for each of the five grades and pre-K, art and music rooms and two dedicated flex spaces.
Tatem Elementary would gain 25 instructional spaces because the developments are going up in the school’s section.
As part of the bond referendum, the district hopes to remove asbestos from walls in one of the auditoriums and receive state aid. Also discussed was the vision of turning the Hopkins Parcel where Cooley Hall is located into an athletic complex.
“When we did our visioning sessions a couple years ago, one of the overwhelming messages we got from the community is that we wanted this area to be not just for the schools, but for the community, (to) be used by everyone in Haddonfield, not just the schools,” Klaus explained.
“That’s what we’re trying to make happen.”
The board has already allocated funds to turn the Hopkins Parcel into a multi-sport turf field that is not part of the referendum, Klaus clarified. He also noted that creating that kind of complex would allow for 27 more hours of play time on the field, getting kids home earlier because they would be able to start side-by-side play sooner in the day.
During the building maintenance portion of his presentation, Klaus explained that though the board could try to do some of the repairs through local taxes, there is also an opportunity to receive state aid through the referendum that the district wouldn’t normally get by covering 100% of local costs.
In total, the bond referendum would cost $46.7 million, with taxpayers covering 81% of that and state aid of $9 million covering 19%. The tax impact is estimated to be $369 per year for the average assessed home of $530,509.
Klaus emphasized that a home’s assessed value is different from the market value at which houses sell. The assessed values can be found at njpropertyrecords.com.
Board president Jaime Grookett explained that although it seems like the district is having periodic referendums, it is how the system was designed to work. In order to make mass improvements, the district needs community approval.
Generally, the board is responsible for operating the budget responsibly, within the permitted 2% increase each year. But it works a bit differently with bigger changes.
“New Jersey’s plan so that the community can have say in large expenses in the school district is that if you want to do big improvements to your school district, you have to go out and ask the community and you’re going to have a vote,” Grookett pointed out.
” … We really want to reflect what it is that the community needs most, and that’s the purpose of having a referendum.”
The projected timeline for a referendum vote is Tuesday, Dec. 10. If approved, the first bids are estimated to open in spring of 2025, with construction beginning that summer and completed in about three to five years.
Leading up to the vote, the district will hold an in-person and online town hall at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 30, at Haddonfield Memorial High School, to answer community questions. Klaus also invited residents to attend the upcoming board of education meetings on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Central/Middle School Media Center; Thursday, Sept. 26, at 7 p.m. in the Haddon Elementary School Media Center; or Thursday, Oct. 10, at 7 p.m. in the Tatem Elementary School all-purpose room.
To learn more about the vote, visit haddonfieldschools.org/vote.
