A recent graduate of Haddonfield Memorial High School had this assessment of the current bathrooms at the school stadium.
“I liken the bathroom in the girls’ room to a bus stop.”
“That was reassuring to me,” said Caroll Stoner, president of the school’s Boys XCTF Association, about renovating those bathrooms. “Every single person I talked to said, ‘You’re right. I will support you. These need to be redone.'”
A fundraiser Stoner launched on May 1 aims to raise $70,000; as of May 11, it has $45,500. Should she not meet her goal this month, Stoner said she will likely extend the fundraiser to June 17.
She’s had help raising money from the Haddonfield Education Trust and the high-school’s cross country team. While the bathroom renovations will cost $70,000 – too much for the school district – Stoner has to raise only half of that, because the trust will match dollar for dollar what she collects.
Part of the reason Stoner wants new bathrooms is to honor the legacy of former track coach Nick Baker and to give back to the program where her three children were runners.
“I personally wanted to do something for the school district,” Stoner explained. “And I personally wanted to do something for coach Baker, who passed away two years ago from cancer. He was a legend. He was everything behind the program here …
“This is kind of my way of giving back to him and my thankfulness for the cross country track and field program in general.”
Stoner hopes to see new dividers, floors, lighting and motion-activated soap dispensers in the bathrooms. Once she raises the money, the school board will have to formally accept the donation.
Joseph Serico, a board member of the trust, explained that once Stoner gets the funding, renovations should take about four to six weeks, in time for the new school year in the fall. Serico said Stoner both approached the trust last year to discuss getting financial help.
Stoner – who has had five children in the school district – said she worked with the board’s business administrator, Michaeal Catalano, to determine how much she needed to raise. Stoner has enlisted the help of the district to advertise the fundraiser, and said she plans to go door to door asking for money.
“If I have to go through graduation and hand out flyers, my son’s graduating, I will do that,” Stoner promised. “I will do whatever I need to do in order to get this done. If I have to show up at games, like a lacrosse game and give out flyers, I’m going to do that.”
Problems with the bathrooms were obvious to Stoner, who works the concession stand at the stadium. She has also heard plenty from others. According to Catalano, the most recent additions to the bathrooms were stall partitions added in the early 2000s. Everything else is older.
Serico said that because the district will use its own contractors – with help from the maintenance team on some plumbing – it will actually save money on the project.
Stoner knows that slowing the fundraising is the financial strain many families are under right now.
“People are tapped out because of a lot of reasons,” she observed. “They’re tapped out, but people are giving sacrificially between the $150 and $200 range. And it’s coming from people who just want to help, not necessarily the teams.”
Stoner would like other school teams to pay $1,000 for a paver, a type of brick that would have the name of the team on it. Only the cross country program has bought one so far. Regardless, Stoner also wants to make a wall plaque with the names of all donors.
But she expects more fundraising will be needed as school budget cuts continue.
” … It’s going to be harder to do projects like this,” she pointed out. “So I think this is a precursor of what might need to be done in the future for certain wish list items to be accomplished. That wasn’t that way in the past. It is just different now.
“It’s different than the years I’ve been there.”
A bathroom at the high-school’s stadium. Renovations are expected to cost $70,000.
