Thursday, May 9, 2013
Andrew Berlin argues the public-private effort to install artificial turf benefited the borough.
This letter to the editor was submitted by Haddonfield Board of Education Vice President Andrew Berlin. Some thoughts on the largest gift in Haddonfield's history When I was a small child, my parents owned a silver Buick Electra. Each morning in the winter, starting the car required an elaborate choreographed dance with the gas pedal and ignition, followed by letting the car warm up for a few minutes. If one drove the car before it finished warming up, it would stall when trying to accelerate to cross the busy street near our house. Back in the 1970s, this was considered normal - it was simply what cars did on cold days. Today in 2013, if one purchased a car that stalled shortly after starting each time you tried to accelerate on a cold …
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The announcement was made in a statement Thursday. Weinstein did not attend.
Haddonfield Board of Education President Steve Weinstein is stepping down as president but remaining on the board, school Superintendent Richard Perry announced during a board meeting Thursday. In a statement, Weinstein cited time constraints of a new position as general counsel of Rowan University with not providing enough time to continue as president. He said he will remain on the board until his term ends at the end of this year. Perry read a statement from Weinstein into the minutes of the meeting. Weinstein was on vacation and not at the meeting. Weinstein, 67, an attorney, was hired as the general counsel of Rowan University last fall. The university is expanding rapidly into a medical research school in collaboration with Cooper …
Monday, March 4, 2013
The school budget was adopted Monday night and sent to the state for approval.
The Haddonfield Board of Education on Monday unanimously approved a 2-percent budget increase for the 2013-14 school year. The increase means a typical homeowner with a property valued at $491,359 will pay $7,308 in school taxes, $194.40 more than last year. School officials said they want to keep programs and staffing at current levels and not reduce them to balance the budget. School Superintendent Richard Perry and the school board cited increases in teacher and administration salaries, text book and extracurricular costs for a $450,259 deficit. But the biggest driver of increased costs was a 24-percent spike for special education instruction. Perry said special-education costs increased from $801,665 to $993,718, a $192,053 …
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The board will hold a regular meeting at the high school library.
The Haddonfield Board of Education is scheduled to gather at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the high school library for a regularly scheduled meeting. The gathering could take on a postmortem air in the wake of the controversial $12.5 Bancroft public purchase referendum defeat on Tuesday. Voters rejected the plan by 251 votes, 2,387 to 2,136, with nearly half of the borough's 9,434 registered voters casting ballots. The defeat effectively kills the joint public effort by the BOE and borough to buy the 19.2-acre Bancroft property at 425 Kings High School East next to the high school. The school board and the borough saw the property as an oasis of possibilities in this nearly built-out, 300-year-old town. The plan was to acquire it for the expansion…
Friday, January 4, 2013
The superintendent and the school board spoke about security in first meeting since the Newtown, CT, school shootings.
Haddonfield school Superintendent Richard Perry said Thursday borough police and the district are working together to ensure safety in the wake of the school shooting in Connecticut last month that left more than two dozen dead. Perry said he will give a presentation on school security at the board's next meeting on Jan. 24. He said extra precautions will be taken during the Bancroft public purchase referendum on Jan. 22 to secure school buildings that will also be polling places that day. Some new procedures are already in place, such as prohibiting students at the high school from traveling through the outdoor breezeway between classes, the superintendent noted. Board member Joe Ehrhardt said he supported extra safety measures but had …
Thursday, January 3, 2013
The board met for a reorganization meeting Thursday.
A statement on the Bancroft public purchase from the Haddonfield Board of Education: To the voters in the Haddonfield School District: For too many years now, the future of the Bancroft School site, immediately adjacent to the Haddonfield High School, has hung in the balance as one proposal after another has been cast aside by community opinion, zoning regulations or redevelopment policies. The Board of Education proposes to seize the opportunity of acquiring this historic and prominent “gateway into Haddonfield” for use by the community at large, for educational and recreational purposes, to allow for possible future school expansion and development of a high school campus, and to secure an open space legacy for our children. Now is the …
Friday, October 26, 2012
Student recognitions were part of a busy meeting.
Commendations were the first priority for Haddonfield schools Superintendent Richard Perry at the Board of Education meeting Thursday. Nine students from Haddonfield Memorial High School were recognized by the board for outstanding achievement on the PSAT, which qualified them for the National Merit Scholarship Program. Approximately 1.5 million students participate annually and the top 50,000 receive special commendations. HMHS students, Justin Kamerling and Taylor Ng qualified as semifinalists. According to the National Merit Scholarship website, "each September, about 16,000 students, or approximately one-third of the 50,000 high scorers, are notified that they have qualified as semifinalists. To ensure that academically talented young …
Friday, October 19, 2012
Commissioners, school board members and other borough officials answer residents' concerns at annual Haddonfield Civic Association "town hall" meeting
Leaf pick up, the Brandywine retirement home expansion and copper gutter thievery were on the minds of about 40 borough residents who attended the Haddonfield Civic Association’s annual “town hall” meeting Thursday night at borough hall. The association is aptly named. Civility ruled the night, even though some of the most contentious issues facing the borough, namely, the proposed Bancroft purchase and installation of artificial turf fields, were specifically designated to be discussed for fully half of the meeting. The meeting format allowed people to submit questions and have them answered by the appropriate borough official in a calm and careful way. “This format allows people to have a voice and to have a thoughtful, non-emotional …
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
In separate meetings Tuesday, both boards approved the $12.2 million sale.
The borough Board of Education and Board of Commissioners, in separate meetings Tuesday, approved an agreement of sale to purchase the 19-acre Bancroft property on Kings Highway East for $12.2 million. Both meetings were sparsely attended, with less than 10 people at each, but still produced some pointed questions about the Bancroft purchase, part of a $16.9 million bond referendum in January to buy and redevelop the parcel adjacent to Haddonfield Memorial High School. Sherry Gallagher, a Chews Landing Road resident, pressed school board President Steve Weinstein about an appraisal of the property that placed its value at $15.1 million. That amount nearly doubled an $8 million appraisal in 2005. "I think the appraiser used a failed …
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
The agreement of sale is the last step before a nearly $17 million bond referendum in January.
The Haddonfield Board of Education is set to vote Tuesday on an agreement of sale to buy the 19-acre Bancroft property on Kings Highway East. The vote is scheduled in a special meeting at the borough middle school at 6 p.m. The BOE and the borough have entered an agreement of sale with Bancroft after a decade of public debate. The parcel is seen by many as an oasis of possibilities in this nearly built-out, 300-year-old town. The public purchase of the land will allow a kind of manifest destiny to annex it to the adjacent Haddonfield Memorial High School campus and preserve parts of it for open space. The public purchase option was among three presented to borough residents last year after another in a series of exhaustive planning studies…
Steve Ahrens
8:51 am on Monday, May 20, 2013
C&S, as I said in my comment the priorities were my own. I am a citizen of the town and do not need to run for office to have opinions. I didn't say improved roads will save the town money. And I did not mention healthcare at all (but we could have an interesting conversation on that subject). Please read the posts before commenting on them. more ›