A new year and a new school board president heralded plans for change and more communication between the Hillsborough Township Board of Education and the community at large during the school board’s latest public meeting.
Judith Haas, Dr. Lorraine Soisson and Ann Harris were sworn in as incoming board members for the next three years by Business Administrator Aiman Mahmoud after certifying their electoral win last November.
According to the official tallies, Haas had 4,283 votes, Harris had 3,586 votes and Soisson had 3,363 votes.
Shortly after officially returning to the board, Haas and Soisson were elected to serve as the Hillsborough Township Board of Education president and vice president, respectively.
Haas had previously served three years as the board’s vice president over her last four terms, but until now, had not been the school board president.
“I’d like to thank Greg Gilette for his efforts as last year’s president. I’m sure I’ll find out very quickly that there’s a lot of additional effort that goes into being president but I look forward to it,” she said.
After thanking her husband Lloyd, her son Lenny and her friends for their support in her campaign last year, Haas said she was looking forward to making 2018 a “year of collaboration, cooperation and deliberate acts of kindness.”
“We have a lot of challenges here and we need everybody to get engaged and we need to keep a direct focus on matters that contribute to making this the best educational program possible,” she said.
In order to do that, Haas created an ad-hoc Communications Committee to help drive parental involvement and help streamline the dissemination of information to the general public.
The first members of the new committee, as appointed by Haas, are Dana Boguszewski, Ann Harris and Jean Trujillo, who would serve as its first chairperson.
Under the new committee, its members will be able to review “all current public information and notification methods and tools that the district uses to let the public know what’s going on,” Haas said.
Moving forward, Haas said she also wants to look into live-streaming future school board meetings over the internet and providing public service announcements for students on the Chromebooks provided by the school district.
“I’d like to create a dashboard of board of education information that would be all in one place on the website, if possible,” Haas said.
Haas said she also wants to create a community-wide event or unifying project for the schools.
“I’d like to do something about improving parent involvement and generate more collaborative efforts in town.”
Along with her mission statement, Haas made a number of appointments to various school board committees:
Trujillo, Brett Cooper and Gillette will sit on the Operations Committee, with Gilette as the chair; Cooper, Harris and Deena Centofanti will serve on the Human Resources Committee, with Centofanti as the chair; Boguszewski, Trujillo and Soisson will serve on the Education Committee, with Soisson as the chair; Soisson, Gillette, Centofanti and Haas will serve on the Governance Committee, with Haas as the chair; Gillette will be the township liaison and serve on the Cultural and Arts Commission; Soisson will be the legislative representative; Trujillo will be the Municipal Alliance representative; Soisson will be the joint council liaison; Haas will be the Garden State Coalition of Schools representative; and Trujillo will serve as the New Jersey School Board Association and Somerset County School Board Association delegate.