The Hammonton Gazette 12/09/15 Edition | Page 6

Page 6 • Wednesday, December 9, 2015 • The Hammonton Gazette The Hammonton Gazette “The Paper of Record” Gabriel J. donio, Publisher Gina rullo, Editor-in-Chief dan russoman, Sports Editor Benny Mendez, Staff Artist Marysusan hoffman, Brittany Mauro, Michael hozik, donna Brown, Joseph Bruno, Kevin troilo, tania rivera, Kelly hunt, Staff The Hammonton Gazette is located at 233 Bellevue ave. to reach a staff member, call [phone] or fax at [phone]. the mailing address is P.o. Box 1228, hammonton, NJ 08037. editorials arh’s gift The Hammonton Gazette is published Wednesdays, by The Hammonton Gazette, Inc. Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. ISSN 1093-6181 Christmas and the holiday season came a little early for Hammonton when locally-based engineering firm Adams, Rehmann and Heggan (ARH) held a special lease-signing ceremony with ARH President Richard Rehmann and Hammonton Mayor Stephen DiDonato inside the 27,000-square-foot, three-floor former Bank of America (and originally the headquarters of First Federal Savings). ARH will be bringing at least 80 and eventually 100-plus jobs to the building, which will be completely renovated, according to Rehmann. MainStreet Hammonton Executive Director Cassie Iacovelli said ARH’s decision was a gift to the downtown. “Having ARH join us in the downtown is like getting an early Christmas present! ARH is a highly-respected firm that has strong ties to Hammonton yet also has offices in other parts of the state. They could have chosen any town in New Jersey, but because of their love and pride for Hammonton, they decided to expand here. That’s special, and I am very grateful for their loyalty to their hometown,” Iacovelli said. We couldn’t have said it better. The engineering firm will be consolidating its operations, emptying its facility uptown on the White Horse Pike (Route 30) and downtown at the corner of Second and Pleasant streets. We are confident that both empty facilities will soon be filled as well — making this a net economic gain for the town. ARH will be more than a business. They will be an instant landmark, a Hammonton icon that will bring people to our community because of their work in all 21 counties of the state and in other states. We are sure these people are going to enjoy walking around our downtown. Because so many local engineering meetings will be held in the Bellevue Avenue building, just a block from the town hall, we believe ARH’s new headquarters will become known as the “second town hall.” Thank you, Adams, Rehmann and Heggan for this great gift. Bittersweet weekend America was seen downtown on the weekend of December 5 and 6. December 5 was a Saturday of the holiday season, and the town would be holding its Christmas tree lighting at the corner of Bellevue and Central Avenue (Ronald Reagan Drive) later that evening. First, the town paused to honor 2014 Hammonton High School graduate and United States Army Private Christopher J. Castaneda, who had died in Iraq in a noncombat-related incident at the age of 19 on November 19. Castaneda had received several medals during his short service in the Army, including one awarded following his death. On December 5, just a few short blocks from the town’s Christmas tree, Castaneda’s funeral service was held at Carnesale Funeral Home. The Hammonton Volunteer Fire Department brought their tower truck and suspended a huge flag from it in Castaneda’s honor. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had already ordered flags throughout that state be lowered to half-mast to honor Castaneda, who left Fort Drum in New York for service in Iraq. Days later, on December 2, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had the flags lowered in New Jersey to honor Castaneda by an executive order. Later in the evening of December 5, just steps away from where people came to pay their respects to a fallen soldier who last year walked the hallways of our public high school, people watched Santa Claus step off a fire truck and “magically” light the town Christmas tree. People and their families enjoyed horse and carriage rides, rides that went past the shops, restaurants, schools and churches of a vibrant downtown Hammonton. On that beautiful, clear holiday evening, the horse and carriage rides also passed by Hammonton Veterans Park on Bellevue Avenue, with its monuments to the fallen and the veterans of many wars, with the flag lit up and flying proudly, honoring the sacrifices that made such a wonderful night in Hammonton, New Jersey, in the United States of America, possible. Private Christopher J. Castaneda’s sacrifice and life had been honored earlier in the day in Hammonton, at the downtown location of Carnesale Funeral Home, so close to all the festive events that occurred later that same evening – as well as down the street on Peach Street a day later on December 6, when the St. Joseph Wildcats and their fans were treated to an impromptu fireworks display after being escorted through the downtown following their seventh-straight football title. For many of us who understood the connection between the separate but connected ceremonies and events held downtown on the weekend of December 5 and 6, it was a bittersweet feeling. We owe Castaneda a debt of thanks for keeping our nation free, so we may congregate, celebrate, worship and speak as we wish, as many did on the nights of December 5 and December 6. It is a debt worth honoring, and we thank all the people who made sure Castaneda was remembered fondly by the town, state and nation he once called home. PersPective/school UPdate Data analysis and school records are very important in schools. The teacher and administrators in Hammonton have high goals for student achievement. At the same time, there are excessive demands on our time. State reports are onerous and continue to grow. In the last few years alone we had the added tasks of more teacher observations, Student Growth Objectives and PARCC assessments. Virtually all NJ schools have a student information system. Without one, it is almost impossible to complete the state — federal reports. The system we use is a fully-integrated single database that has teachers grade books, lesson planner, student medical information, scheduling, and parent communications and all our state and federal reports Our student information system downloads all the test data from the N.J. State assessments and enables us to sort it by teacher, subject test area and sub tests. For example, the reading score will be broken down by literary, information and vocabulary. This will enable the teachers to use the data to improve instruction. In addition to the state standardized results, we have our benchmarks in the student information system and teacher developed tests and quizzes. Our student data management system automatically generates letters to parents based on how many absences their children have. This is critical in helping students avoid failing because of excessive absences. We can also type messages to parents into the system, and they are turned into email, SMS text and/or synthesized speech. We can use all the fields to target specific parent groups. We send messages for school cancellations, event reminders and general announcements. Parents can choose the type of notification they receive. Through the Parent Portal parents have instant access to information on their children’s progress, test results and homework. Our food service module is also part of the student data management system. The system alerts our staff to food allergies and notifies parents when they need to put more money in their children’s food service accounts. Student account management allows students to make purchases using prepaid accounts, lunch tickets or cash. Parents and students can check on the grades. Teachers keep the grades in the student information system and the grades generate report cards, progress reports and grade point averages. The Lesson Planner enables the teachers to develop daily and unit plans in individual, dep artment or our district’s format. We have text boxes for each component of the plan that are saved to a database for retrieval and analysis. Teachers can automatically post assignments to their grade book that can be seen in the parent and student portals. Developing student schedules is a long process. With Realtime, we are able to be proactive in developing the schedule by looking at the resource allocation chart. This chart tells us how many students are able to enroll in a class at a specific period. The system also lets you roll over into the next year – so there is a chance to do a new schedule with just minor changes. Security is a great concern for us. Our system provides Internet standardized 128 Bit-SHA 256 SSL encryption for all connections. Our student data is housed in a Tier-2 data center leveraging Alert Logic active monitoring in addition to internal monitoring to guard against Internet based intrusion. The data center has 24x7x365 security, biometrics, video surveillance, and three layers of NOC monitoring. All switches, routers and firewall are designed with high availability and fail over capacity. An effective student information system helps improve instruction, communicates to parents and meets the requirements of state reports. dr. dan Blachford superintendent hammonton school district The Hammonton Gazette welcomes letters to the editor that are no more than 800 words long. All letters must include the name of the author and an address and telephone number for verification. Letters should be mailed to The Hammonton Gazette, Editorial Page, P.O. Box 1228, Hammonton, NJ 08037. Letters also will be accepted via fax. The fax number is 704-1938.  Or by email to [email protected]. Deadline for all submissions is 2 p.m. Monday. The Hammonton Gazette reserves the right to edit any submissions. The opinions expressed in letters, perspectives or in guest columns do not necessarily reflect those of The Hammonton Gazette.  The Gazette is not responsible for factual errors in letters, perspectives or in guest columns. The Gazette retains the right to refuse any submission or advertisement.