Dear Parents, Guardians, Students, Staff and Community Members:
On behalf of the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School District Board of Education, welcome to the 2012-2013 school year! We are looking forward to a great year for our students, staff, parents/guardians, and communities. We are proud to report that both North Hunterdon and Voorhees High Schools were listed among the Highest Performing Schools in the state this year by the New Jersey Department of Education as part of its new accountability system. This designation was based on school-wide proficiency on standardized tests and graduation rates. Our schools were the only ones in Hunterdon County included on the list, and only 69 out of 2,500 total schools in the state were recognized as Highest Performing. This is quite an honor for our two high schools!
In addition, our high schools were again included on the Washington Post’s list of America’s Best High Schools. We are pleased that our schools have been recognized among the best in the state and the country, and we congratulate our staff and students for all their hard work and commitment.
The district staff has been quite busy this summer preparing for the new school year. We are pleased to report that the replacement of the roof at North Hunterdon High School is close to completion. In addition, work has begun on replacing the generator at Voorhees High School, which will help us through the power outages that we experience, more than we would like. We had to fill over 50 positions because of retirements, resignations, new positions added, or employees on leave.
As all students head back to school on August 23, we would like to share the goals and a few of the projects towards which our administration, Board of Education, and staff members will be working during the 2012-2013 school year:
- Continuing to work towards increasing students’ scores on the SAT and the number of students achieving advanced proficiency on the HSPA test by 5%.
- Beginning to implement action plans on goals from our new five-year Strategic Plan, which include increasing communication through social media and working with our sending districts towards a common calendar and more articulation time.
- Finishing the implementation of energy conservation measures outlined in the energy savings plan developed for us by Honeywell International.
- Implementing a new teacher evaluation system and participating in a pilot study for principals’ evaluation system.
- Piloting a 1:1 initiative where students will be issued tablets for use in class during the year. We are piloting this initiative in one class at each high school.
Though we are entering a new school year, please take a moment to review some of the accomplishments of the last year, which included:
- Graduation of 430 students from North Hunterdon and 261 from Voorhees on June 8, 2012.
- Meeting the requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress under the No Child Left Behind Act for both high schools.
- Receiving a $100,000 grant from New Jersey Department of Education for Special Education because of the excellence of our programs.
- Aligning all of our curricula to the most current New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards in each subject area.
- Negotiating a new three-year contract with the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Education Association.
- Completing Strategic Planning, which produced a new five-year plan (2012-2017).
- Successful implementation of an autism class at Voorhees.
- Successful introduction of the Rachel’s Challenge Program at both high schools (http://www.rachelschallenge.org/).
- North Hunterdon and Voorhees were the top two high schools for the most donations at their blood drives, within the New York Blood Center’s tri-state area.
- And most recently, receiving a 100% score in four out of five areas (with 98% in the last area) on our district’s Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC) performance review by the N.J.Department of Education for 2011-2012. This review is done every three years concerning the following areas: Instruction and Program, Fiscal Management, Governance, Personnel and Operations. The NJDOE has designated our district as “high performing” because of these scores.
We anticipate that the 2012-2013 school year will be filled with notable accomplishments. Please check our district website, www.nhvweb.net, periodically for news and updates as well as the individual high school websites. Our Board of Education and administration thank you for your continued interest, involvement, and support of our efforts on behalf of our students. Have a great year!
Sincerely,
Charles M. Shaddow, Ph.D.
Superintendent of Schools