At Bancroft School, a day to throw away things and keep memories

The basement of the Lullworth Building at the Bancroft School in Haddonfield, once full of furniture, photographs, antiques, and more, was largely empty by mid-morning Monday.

Outside, large trash containers were piled full with broken chairs, desks, and other equipment.

Volunteers spent several hours Monday cleaning out multiple buildings on the campus at 425 Kings Highway E. as part of "Dumpster Day," as the school prepares to move to its new campus in Mount Laurel.

Bancroft, a private institution for students with autism and other developmental disabilities, opened in Haddonfield in 1892 and its main campus has been there  ever since. But the school will finalize its move to Mount Laurel in January to better accommodate its current student population.

"We've been talking about the need to either renovate or move, just based on the facilities that exist today and the population that we're serving," CEO Toni Pergolin said.

Pergolin said Bancroft's Haddonfield campus was built to hold up to 100 students. Now, it has about 220.

The Mount Laurel campus will accommodate more than that. The campus is about 80 acres, compared to the 20 acres in Haddonfield. Classrooms and other facilities will also be larger.

"It's a better space and environment than we have here today," Pergolin said.

Bancroft sold its Haddonfield campus to the borough in 2016 after years spent trying to sell the property. The Haddonfield School District had proposed to acquire the land for about $12 million, but that was shot down in 2013 in a bond referendum. A later proposal for Camden County to purchase the land was also turned down.

On Monday, Bancroft employees and volunteers from the Sage Foundation scoured the attics of the school's Carriage House and Cooley Buildings in addition to the Lullworth basement. The Lullworth Building has been used in recent years to house administrative offices.

The Sage Foundation is a philanthropic branch of Sage, a company that provides businesses with services such as accounting, human resources, and payroll.

With each item found, volunteers had to decide whether to throw it away, shred it, sell it, or preserve it. They consulted with officials at the school, such as Bancroft history expert and executive liaison Kathy Ross, to determine what was worth preserving, what should be set aside to be sold, and what could be tossed. Among the items that were found and preserved were student intake forms from some of the first students to attend the school.

Ross said the school is also planning to preserve photographs, newspaper clippings, books, audiotapes, and other items that document the school's history. Ross has been in touch with Rutgers-Camden, and she said many of the items the school chooses to keep will be preserved at the university. Other will be kept at the Bancroft headquarters in Cherry Hill.

"We're watching to make sure that we're not throwing out anything that we shouldn't be," Ross said.

Tony Gravinese, a staff coordinator at the school, led the effort inside the Cooley attic. He said there were about 30 volunteers who helped with Monday's cleanup.

"Anything that looked aged and old, we threw away," he said. "Basically we just eyed things up and made the decision whether to get rid of it."

The cleanup efforts will continue through the summer and into the fall. Construction at the Mount Laurel campus, which began last September, is scheduled to be finished in October, and the school will use November and December to move to the new campus. Its first day of school at Mount Laurel will be Jan. 4, 2018.

"It's sad to leave Haddonfield," Ross said. "It breaks my heart to think we're leaving our home. But when you think about where we're going, to know it's being designed for what we're doing … it's going to be that much better."