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HAMMONTON—Michael Mattina is returning to Hammonton High School as the new principal.
Mattina started his career in education as a guidance counselor at Hammonton High School in 2007, and he was there for seven years.
While he was a guidance counselor, he received his second masters degree and admin certification. He also coached baseball.
“My time here was amazing. Hammonton is over the moon for me. I love Hammonton,” Mattina said.
In 2013, he worked at Buena as the assistant principal for a couple years.
After Buena, he worked at Ocean City High School as their assistant principal for three-and-a-half years.
Then for the last five years, he was principal at the intermediate school at Ocean City.
One of his accomplishments at his last job was creating a zen den last year. It was a place where students could go to decompress.
Now he is excited to be back at Hammonton High School as the principal.
“When this job opened up and there was a chance to come back to Hammonton, my family and I were very excited about that. This was a really cool time in my life. These are really good people, great town,” Mattina said.
Mattina is replacing former Hammonton High School principal Thomas Ramsay who became the new Superintendent of Schools this summer.
“Mr. Tom Ramsay was a mentor for me while I was here. He became superintendent, and now I got a chance to work with Tom every day. It’s exciting,” Mattina said.
As principal, his job is to ensure success and work with stakeholders such as staff, students, parents and community members to accomplish that.
“We want to ensure the kids are successful, and there’s a lot of ways and measures of success,” Mattina said. “We want kids to by happy. We want kids to feel safe. We want kids to come to school that they like.”
Student safety is important to Mattina.
“I’m always going to first come into school with a mind of student safety. Student safety emotionally and physically,” Mattina said.
As building leader, he said his job is to protect everybody and make sure they know how to get the help they need.
Mattina is originally from Little Egg Harbor and currently resides in Upper Township with his wife Michele and two children Gavin and Anneliece.
His son Gavin was born in 2007 when Mattina first started working at Hammonton High School and now Gavin is starting his junior year of high school at Ocean City while Anneliece is starting her sophomore year.
“Married almost 20 years now, two high school aged children, so I know what these kids are going through every day,” Mattina said.
During the new school year, Mattina looks forward to reestablishing old relationships as well as building new relationships at the high school.
“I know a lot of the staff here from when I left, so I can’t wait to see those people,” Mattina said.
He plans on meeting with student groups and leaders and hearing what students want from the school.
“I want to hear their perspective. They’re the one getting up every day and coming into this building and we’re providing for them,” Mattina said.
For Mattina, his biggest challenge is being the new guy.
“People want to right away want to know, ‘Who is he?’ You get a new person in charge, and they’re a little apprehensive. Building trusting relationships takes a little time but it happens. It unfolds naturally, and once you have that, the sky is the limit because once you have faith in them and they have faith in you it’s like we can take on anything. We can overcome any obstacle,” Mattina said.
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