District Newsletter

We are thrilled to announce that 32 Haddonfield residents expressed interest in the two immediate Board vacancies! We can all be proud of this clear affirmation that members of our local community recognize the importance of the Board of Education and our educational programs.

The large number of candidates prohibits in-person interviews with each individual. Instead, we are employing the following process:

• Each candidate was required to reply to a series of questions. Completed responses were returned to the Board Secretary by Friday, September 24th.

• The responses, previously submitted letters of interest and resumes/CVs will be evaluated by members of the Board.

• The Board will then select five to seven candidates to interview in person. Candidates will be contacted by October 1, 2021.

• Final interviews will be held in a public meeting on October 7, 2021.

• The two new Board members will be sworn in on October 14th.

As of today, we have been back in school, in person, for 16 days. I believe I speak for many when I say that it has been enormously satisfying to see parents and children walking to school, teachers meeting their classes each morning, crossing guards directing the safe passage of our students, after-school athletic practices, and other signs of “school life as we knew it.”

However, I want all of our families and employees to have faith that we continue to carefully monitor national, state, county and borough news as well as recommendations from the CDC and the local Department of Health. The Pandemic Response Team continues to hold weekly meetings, we still meet with county health officials bi-weekly, and we regularly share information through the “@HSDHealth” newsletters. Details of the latest COVID+ tests are posted on our website under “COVID Info.”

Last week, in the spirit of ongoing vigilance, we temporarily closed one section of preschool at Central Elementary as we waited for COVID test results for two symptomatic students and in response to a COVID+ staff member. The test results were negative and the class has reopened.

Tracking the Coronavirus in New Jersey, we see that, unfortunately, Camden County is back in the orange or high zone. In the next few weeks, we will make modifications to our current plan. We will now exclude non-vaccinated individuals within three feet of a COVID+ individual, and classroom setups will return to the way they looked last June. As more decisions are made, we will keep you all informed.

Essential to our success during the last 19 months has been the unflagging support we have received from ALL of you and from ALL of the Haddonfield community. And, if we didn’t already know it, the response to our “call for applicants” for two immediate Board of Education openings has driven home the fact that our citizens are passionate about our schools and our school children. There have been 32 applicants for these two spots (four have since withdrawn), so many that we have had to alter our interview process. Immediately above my message is an explanation of the process and the timeline.

Challenges persist; there is no doubt. But I remain confident that Haddonfield’s strength, resilience, and community spirit will bolster our progress as we move forward.

Chuck Klaus,

Superintendent of Schools

Haddonfield School District is excited to participate in the Governor's Educator of the Year (GEOY) program, but we need your help. The intent of this program is to recognize the hard work of our outstanding TEACHERS and EDUCATIONAL SERVICES PROFESSIONALS. Below you will find a link to the nomination form (used for both categories). The criteria that you should consider for any nomination are the bulleted items on the form, and a description of an educational services professional follows the bullets.

Governor’s Educator of the Year Nomination form

Please complete this nomination form by Wednesday, November 10, 2021. Administrators, staff members, parents, students and community members are encouraged to participate.

A cross-district committee will be established to review nominations and make a selection for each building before Thanksgiving Break.

We will also be recognizing SUPPORT STAFF PROFESSIONALS from Haddonfield Schools for their hard work and dedication to the district. These individuals will be selected by a committee and recognized by the Board of Education. If you know of a paraprofessional, secretary, custodian, maintenance worker, bus driver, van attendant or technology specialist who is dedicated, inspiring, and making a difference in the lives of staff, parents and students, please take the time to nominate this person. Please use the same nomination form, also due by Wednesday, November 10, 2021. A description of the category of “support professional” follows the bullets on the nomination form.

We have wonderful teachers and educational services and support professionals in our schools, and now is the time to recognize them for their hard work and dedication to our students, parents, and community!

One of the changes to the 2020-21 school year resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic was the cancellation of the NJSLA standardized assessments (New Jersey’s Student Learning Assessments) for English Language Arts (ELA), Mathematics, and Science.

On April 6, 2021, the U.S. Department of Education (USED), recognizing that “we are in the midst of a pandemic that requires real flexibility,” informed the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) that the administration of Start Strong Assessments in fall 2021 will satisfy the federal, statewide requirement to administer general assessments in ELA, mathematics, and science for the 2020-2021 school year.

The Start Strong Assessment (SSA) is intended to:

• Produce information that our teachers will use as a standards-based complement to the resources used in their classrooms to evaluate the needs of students.

• Be administered quickly and provide results relatively quickly to teachers and parents.

• Meet federal flexibility for the 2020-2021 school year associated with the administration of general ELA/math/science assessment, including public reporting of school-level results disaggregated by subgroup.

The SSA is not intended to:

• Replace local standards-based benchmark assessments districts may already have in place.

• Replace the spring 2022 NJSLA statewide summative assessments. This is one-time flexibility granted by the U.S. Department of Education (USED). It is expected that all eligible students will participate in the spring 2022 NJSLA statewide assessments.

As we enter into the 2021-22 school year, one of our major curricular goals is to adhere to our curriculum review cycle and thoroughly examine our K-12 math program.

Our process will be a thorough, inclusive, and intentional approach that will maximize professional learning and yield more representative program choices. In some ways this will be more difficult because we’re going to try three new programs at the elementary level and two at the secondary school level. District assessment data was used to design pilot program implementation. All of the programs chosen are standards-aligned and have strong digital components and paper-based supports.

Some of the reasons programs were chosen for consideration:

• Long history of research
• Support from authors of Common Core
• Concepts and skills are de-compartmentalized
• Understanding by Design framework, Universal Design for Learning, used by HSD secondary grades for several years
• Curriculum is based on Illustrative Math’s OER, ongoing coaching for teachers, low-floor/high-ceiling, conceptual understanding, immediate feedback for teachers and students

Teachers, school leaders, staff, and students in the Haddonfield School District community continue to learn how to use emotions to reach our goals. We have committed to implementing RULER, an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning (SEL) developed at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. RULER is also an acronym for emotional intelligence skills: Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions. Research finds that children who understand and manage their feelings make more responsible decisions, have stronger relationships, and perform better in school.

We continue to use local data to help drive and inform SEL initiatives. For example, based on the district-wide SEL data collected at the end of last year (click here for the slide analysis), we have developed district-wide goals to build upon areas of strength and improve upon areas of deficiency.

We continue to practice the skills ourselves to develop our abilities, become more emotionally intelligent educators and leaders, and are ready to teach the RULER tools and model the skills for the students. During the 2020-21 school year, we implemented four RULER lessons for all students, PK-12. This year, we are expanding the RULER curriculum for the 2021-22 school year.

As we learn more about emotional intelligence skills, we’d like to do so in partnership with you. As such, we will be extending opportunities for parents and caregivers to learn more about RULER throughout the year. To start, we encourage you to review these links to learn more about RULER: RULER Family Brochure / RULER Skills Overview for Families.