One day into the new school year, the Haddonfield district continues work on major construction projects approved in a bond referendum adopted last year.
The high-school stadium is being renovated to be ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) compliant, with wheelchair accessibility and companion seating.
“What has always been done in the past, the people in wheelchairs would be sitting on the track,” said Superintendent Chuck Klaus.
Another project at the high school involves repairs after a sprinkler head in the library burst, flooding carpets and ruining furniture – as well as about 1,300 books that Klaus said would be replaced. And while not part of the referendum, the school’s main elevators have been refurbished.
The high school also got new flooring, as did Central School and Elizabeth Haddon Elementary, because rooms in the three buildings had poor floors that contained mercury. At Elizabeth Haddon, the former media center is being split into three classrooms that will accommodate occupational and physical therapy and a music room.
“For the next year, until all the construction is done, the music room will be a temporary library,” Klaus explained, “so that’s what we’re going to be doing there. The music will be on the stage like it is now.”
Classroom spaces already completed will allow for extended-day kindergarten in the district, with one section of extended kindergarten in all three elementary schools. The district is in its second year of using the i-Ready math curriculum for kindergarten through fifth-grade students; it has also been extended to sixth grade, an addition the district hopes will improve overall math scores.
“Our students would have a continuum of the math program that they’re used to as they make the transition from fifth grade to sixth grade,” Klaus noted, “because elementary to middle school is already a hard transition. When you change math programs in the middle of it, it just makes it more challenging, so this way we’re trying to look for continuity there.”
New courses include environmental science and the physics of sports, which have already seen increased enrollment and will be taught by existing teaching staff.
“We have fewer sections of our year-long environmental science now to support the semester-long examples, and we have fewer kids students taking year-long physics, so that’s how we’re able to do that with our current staffing,” Klaus explained.
For English and language arts courses, the district continues to audit current programs and make changes when necessary. The largest curriculum undertaking this year is establishment of a scoping sequence of writing rubrics for K-to-12 students.
