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On Friday, interim Secaucus school superintendent Mark Toback released these five goals for 2025-2026 for the school district:

SECAUCUS, NJ — On Friday, interim Secaucus school superintendent Mark Toback released the following, which are his five goals for 2025-2026 for the Secaucus school district.

The five goals were approved by the Secaucus Board of Education. From the district:

The Secaucus Board of Education is pleased to announce the approval of five district goals for the 2025–2026 school year. These goals reflect a continued commitment to providing a safe, supportive and academically rigorous environment for all students. Developed collaboratively, these goals focus on strengthening instruction, expanding programs, enhancing staff training, and building leadership capacity and stability across our schools.

Goal 1: Advancing Safety and Security Measures

Safety and security are always job #1 at our schools. A safe school climate remains the foundation for teaching, learning and student success. This work includes evaluating current procedures, strengthening communication systems and implementing enhancements that align with best practices in school safety.

Goal 2: Enhancing Student Achievement Through Data-Informed Instruction

Secaucus Public Schools will expand its use of data to guide instruction, improve academic outcomes, and better support students. With the state transitioning to a new adaptive testing model, the district will rely on internal benchmarks to track progress. Schools will utilize data teams, increase staff training in data analysis, implement tiered supports for students and provide the Board of Education with district-wide performance updates three times per year.

Goal 3: Enhanced Training and Professional Development for Support Staff

Recognizing the essential role of paraprofessionals and other support staff, the district will launch a comprehensive professional development program tailored to their unique responsibilities. This includes a districtwide needs assessment, expanded training sessions, the creation of a virtual onboarding program for new employees and feedback systems to continually strengthen our support staff training model.

Goal 4: Building Early Childhood Enrollment (Multi-Year Goal)

To support our youngest learners, the district will work to increase enrollment in the Early Childhood Center at Millridge School by strengthening the program, expanding community awareness, and improving parent engagement. Efforts include reviewing the early childhood curriculum, updating the school website and communications, evaluating program structure and facilities, and exploring best practices through site visits at local school districts. These steps will help ensure a nurturing and developmentally appropriate start for all preschool students, while also meeting the needs of parents.

Goal 5: Strengthening Leadership Capacity Across the District

To ensure long-term stability and continued excellence in our schools, the district will invest in developing our current and aspiring leaders. This includes implementing leadership pathways, providing coaching and mentorship opportunities, offering ongoing professional development and creating leadership forums that allow administrators to collaborate, problem-solve and share expertise. Building strong internal leadership ensures consistency, stability and a visible career ladder for staff.

These five goals reflect our district’s dedication to improvement and a commitment to the students and families of Secaucus. For more information, please contact interim Secaucus schools superintendent Mark Toback at mtoback@sboe.org.

As South Asian and Muslim immigrants transform a small New Jersey town, the five-term mayor has managed to keep the peace. What happens when he’s gone?

Michael Gonnelli, the mayor of Secaucus, has run unopposed in four of the five elections he has won.

Barely two months after President Trump’s inauguration, a simple dispute in Secaucus, N.J., was threatening to turn into a minor crisis.

For almost all of March, a giant Islamic crescent had hung in the town’s main square to mark the month of Ramadan — a reflection of the growing Muslim population among the town’s 22,000 residents. With Easter approaching, some longtime Italian American residents were bristling at what they saw as preferential treatment.

A Facebook post by Nick Mattiello, 30, a former volunteer firefighter, gained traction in a local town group, crystallizing the frustration. Mr. Mattiello cited “a noticeable absence of displays honoring Christianity” despite representation for other faiths. He called for an Easter display in the spot where the Ramadan crescent had hung.

“We acknowledge other religions but continuously overlook the foundational one that reveres Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,” he wrote. “It’s disappointing and disheartening to me.”

What might have become an explosive situation was quickly defused when Mayor Michael Gonnelli learned of the complaint. He asked a public works employee to build a cross, which went up after Ramadan ended, right in time for Easter. Crisis averted.

Such conflicts have become more common in Secaucus. When Mr. Gonnelli first became mayor in 2009, the town resembled him: white and Italian American. But in the intervening years, Secaucus, five miles west of Manhattan in New Jersey’s Meadowlands, has experienced a transformation.

White residents are now a minority in a diverse community where Indian, Asian and Latino populations have grown substantially. Though the town has traditionally leaned Democratic, Vice President Kamala Harris beat Mr. Trump by just 70 votes in last year’s election.

Mr. Gonnelli grew up in Secaucus, and he used to fish and hunt pheasants in the marshland behind his home before a hospital and a housing development were built there. He and his wife, Linda, raised three children in the town.

Mr. Gonnelli held several municipal positions — fire chief, public works superintendent, councilman — before being pressed into service as mayor after his predecessor went to prison for corruption. After 16 years in office, Mr. Gonnelli still seems to be widely admired; he has run unopposed as an independent in four of his five terms, including this past November.

But as Mr. Gonnelli enters what may be his final term at age 70, some residents wonder how Secaucus will navigate cultural change without his charismatic and notably inclusive governance.

“This town used to be heavily Italian,” the mayor said before the election. “Now it’s everyone, which makes it so much better. Even in my office, I have Indians, Egyptians, Puerto Ricans, you name it.”

Incorporated as a pig-farming town in the early 1900s, Secaucus for decades was synonymous with Italian American life: neighborhood delis, Catholic churches and backdrops for “The Sopranos.”

Today, its transformation is visible everywhere: a Gandhi statue greets visitors at the town recreation center; the big-box chain HomeGoods sells Diwali decorations; and an Indian grocery opened last year. Even Natoli’s, the town’s oldest Italian deli, has added vegetarian options to accommodate observant Hindus.

Through it all, Mr. Gonnelli has never strayed from a kind of small-town politics. His familiar white Jeep is stuffed with children’s toys that he passes out as freely as he shares his cellphone number. Residents have countless examples of Mr. Gonnelli’s responding to the most mundane requests.

Dawn Grassano, a local nurse, choked up recalling a time of financial stress when her son’s sneakers fell apart at school. She hadn’t told anyone, she said, but Mr. Gonnelli showed up the next morning with a new pair of Nikes for the boy.

On a typical Friday in September, Mr. Gonnelli was in his office, working the phones. He found a couch for someone who had recently moved to town, rounded up tables for a church fair and called an older woman, at her daughter’s request, and urged her to go to the hospital.

Visitors cycled through his office all morning. Mr. Gonnelli welcomed a data-center developer — the kind of commercial project he actively courts to keep property taxes down — and urged him to plant trees around town. He met a woman who said she was at the brink of homelessness, and he called around until he found her an apartment without move-in fees.

The mayor spent the afternoon making daily rounds in his Jeep. His first stop was a town-run thrift shop stocked floor to ceiling with boxes of donated clothes and other supplies, free for needy Secaucus residents. Next was a brief visit to the senior center and then on to the town’s Tot Center, where he handed out stuffed toys to a room full of toddlers. People stopped him constantly to chat, vent or ask for help.

To Jayesh Patel, who immigrated to the United States from India as a child in 1980 and runs a local day-care business, the mayor’s responsiveness is impressive. “I can ask him any question and he’ll get me an answer,” he said. “I mean, the guy’s on Facebook, for God’s sake, responding to messages nonstop. I worry about his stress levels.”

In recent years, Mr. Gonnelli has increasingly spent his time brokering relations between different cultural groups. When the Indian grocery opened, he heard complaints from a number of longtime residents.

“It’s a grocery store,” he recalled telling them. “You can shop there, too.” Privately, he said, he also encouraged the store owner to consider adding a deli section, suggesting that doing so would appeal to Italian American shoppers.

He sees his role as accommodating a range of requests: for space to gather, permits for events, equipment donations. “I say yes to everyone,” he said, “as long as I can say yes.”

But he is not blind to the increased friction around immigration and the national political climate, which he calls “a complete mess.”

Earlier this year, after he showed support for the construction of a mosque across from Town Hall, white and Indian residents expressed concerns to him privately, he said, ostensibly about increased traffic. Mr. Gonnelli’s typical response, he said, is to point out that Secaucus already has multiple churches and a temple, and that the Muslim community does a lot for the town.

His reassurances haven’t eliminated unease. On a recent Facebook thread in a town group, one commenter avoided subtlety: “I looked at the demographics and I’d rather not live around Indian and Muslim immigrants.”

Steve Natoli, 68, whose namesake deli has served as Secaucus’s unofficial town hall for decades, sees national polarization playing out in his customers’ daily conversations. Some residents fear “a mass exodus of Americans,” he said — the same worries he has witnessed through Hudson County’s waves of Polish, German, Irish, Italian and Hispanic immigration. “When the Italians came into Hoboken, everybody was like, ‘Oh, my God, the Mafia is coming,’” Mr. Natoli said. “That’s not how it works.”

But he conceded that this time seemed different. Mr. Natoli feels that normal tensions have been supercharged by an American political culture that has abandoned the civility of “old souls,” politicians like Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill — or Mr. Gonnelli. A framed photo in Mr. Natoli’s deli honors the “3 o’clock club”: retired friends who gathered daily to argue about politics over sandwiches and coffee, a ritual he now finds hard to imagine.

These days, the town’s different communities often live in parallel. Last month, Secaucus’s main square, Buchmuller Park, was the site of a vigil for the conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on a Tuesday and a Diwali festival on the weekend. There was virtually no overlap in attendees.

The vigil for Mr. Kirk was organized by Mr. Mattiello, who had led the push for an Easter cross in the town square. Around 150 people attended, mostly wearing red, with some in MAGA gear. The mayor chose not to attend, although he approved the event and waived permits and fees.

Days later, as many as 500 people, mostly South Asian, filled the park to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. Mr. Gonnelli made an appearance, wearing a white Nehru jacket with pastel accents. Earlier in the day, he had joined a separate Diwali ceremony at the Hindu temple, where trays of Indian food and sweets shared a table with a six-foot Italian hero (vegetarian) and several pizzas. The bagpipers wore turbans, not kilts.

Even a mayor with five landslide victories has his detractors. “I’m sure there’s people that don’t like me, believe me,” Mr. Gonnelli said. “There’s got to be people out there who hate my guts. But I don’t really know who they are.” Then one came to mind — someone the mayor said opposes just about everything he stands for. After a pause, he added, “He’s just that kind of guy.”

Mr. Gonnelli sees Secaucus’s evolution as part of a shift toward a more multicultural America, in both its populace and leadership. Just across the Hudson, New York City recently elected its first South Asian mayor, Zohran Mamdani, whom Mr. Gonnelli said he hoped to meet one day.

He said the next mayor of Secaucus may well be Indian, although he added that it could be someone “Italian, Asian, Norwegian — no one can predict.” He would be happy to pass on his formula for harmony: Say yes to everyone, broker peace where possible, trust the strength of small-town ties. “Me, personally?” he added, “All I want is the best for Secaucus — somebody who gets along with everyone.”

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 18, 2025, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: As Immigration Recasts Town, Mayor’s ‘Yes’ Keeps the Peace. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Here's everything planned at American Dream this season, from Santa's arrival parade, breakfast with Santa and an Angry Birds holiday party:

SECAUCUS, NJ — Santa Claus will arrive with great fanfare to American Dream mall this weekend. And in Secaucus, Santa will be at the Rec Center Dec. 6 and then again at the Secaucus town museum Dec. 13.

Santa will have an arrival parade at American Dream this Saturday, Nov. 15. Santa will lead a parade that will kick off at 10:30 a.m., departing from the Coca Cola Bubble in Court A. Follow the indoor parade as Santa walks to his holiday home at Holiday Dreamland inside the mall. Santa will remain there (with elves) all season long to take pictures with kids.

Santa will be at the Rec Center Dec. 6, with chances in the morning and evening to take photos.

On Dec. 13, the Secaucus town museum will also host Santa. All are welcome to come to the town museum for a tree decorating. They will have treats, candy, hot cocoa and toys. 11 a.m. - 3 p.m Dec. 13.

And here's everything planned at American Dream for Black Friday and the Christmas holiday season:

On November 15, the Apollo Theatre will have open auditions for its annual Amateur Night Holiday Special. Noon – 4 p.m. Location: Court D. Up to 125 vocalists will audition. First come, first served for auditions

Pet photos with Santa at American Dream: Guests can bring their furry friends (dogs only) for photos. Dates: November 17, 24; December 1, 8, 15 from 4 - 7 p.m.

Nick The Halls - daily beginning November 22 (dance parties are weekend only) Location: Nickelodeon Universe

Get in the holiday spirit with Nick the Halls at Nickelodeon Universe! Create endless memories with your favorite Nickelodeon friends dressed in their holiday best. Ask an Elf to help you write a letter to Santa, decorate ornaments, or make a festive craft in the Elf Workshop. Enjoy dancing in snow flurries during our Nick the Halls Dance Party.

Black Friday, Nov. 28 is action packed at American Dream:

American Dream will open at 3 a.m. on Black Friday (doors open from A deck, Level 1) and the first 250 guests in line that day can strap into the Double Dare Human Crane or spin the prize wheel inside Nickelodeon Universe and win prizes; American Dream is only saying prizes will be "significant." The mall will have free skating at The Rink, free roller coaster rides on Shellraiser and free admission to the Paw Patrol Hero Academy at Nickelodeon Universe from 6 – 8 a.m.

Breakfast with Characters - December 7 at 9 a.m.

Celebrate the holidays with Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob over breakfast at Marcus Live! restaurant on the third floor.

Merry Mondays at Marcus Live! restaurantEvery Monday night in December, enjoy dinner, decorating and festive fun, including gingerbread cookie decorating and hot cocoa bars.Dates: December 1, 8, 15Location: Marcus Live!

Dec. 15: Max McNown concert 6 p.m. Dream Stage In collaboration with Audacy’s NEW 102.7’s Karen Carson In The Morning, American Dream will host a three-week holiday toy drive benefiting New York City foster kids, culminating in a live performance by rising musical star Max McNown. Ticket information to be released on a later date

Friday Night Lights

On Friday nights in December, various American Dream brands take the Dream Stage, offering interactive experiences, entertainment and exclusive product sampling.Dates: December 5, 12, 19 3 – 9 p.m.Location: Dream Stage

Santa Brunch - December 13, 14, 20, 21

Enjoy a magical morning with Santa at Carpaccio for brunch, featuring festive activities and delicious treats.Location: Carpaccio

Characters of the Dream Parade - December 20 and 21 at 3 p.m.

Watch your favorite American Dream characters parade throughout the center and take pictures alongside your favorite friends. Begins in Court A.

Angry Birds: Holiday Party - Dec. 21 from noon - 4 p.m.

Celebrate the holidays with Red the Angry Bird and win prizes for a hole-in-one while enjoying arts and crafts projects and enjoying face painting and balloon artists. Location: Angry Birds mini golf

Coca Cola Gift Wrapping

Bring your holiday gifts to Holiday Dreamland for free gift wrapping, courtesy Coca Cola. Dates: November 28, 29; December 12, 13, 16, 20, 22, 23, 24 Noon – 8 p.m.

Noon Year’s Eve - Dec. 31 - New Year's Eve for kids, starts at 11 a.m.

American Dream’s youngest guests can welcome the New Year early with a daytime celebration at Nickelodeon Universe, including a special countdown to noon. Location: Nickelodeon Universe

Senior bingo night is back, Nov. 3. There will be kids' bingo Nov. 13, a veterans' ceremony at town hall Nov. 11 and an art show Nov. 22.

SECAUCUS, NJ — Here's everything the town of Secaucus has planned for November.

Due to the continued federal government shutdown, many residents will not receive assistance this month. Mayor Mike Gonnelli and the Town Council are asking for the public to donate non-perishable items. Please drop your donations at one of the following locations

Food Pantry—145 Front St Mon-Fri 8 am – 3 pmCommunity Center—101 Centre Ave Mon – Fri 8 am – 3 pmLibrary—1379 Paterson Plank Rd Mon – Fri 9 am – 9 pmTown Hall—1203 Paterson Plank Rd – 24/7

Recreation Center - 1200 Koelle Blvd - Mon - Fri 5:30 am – 9:30 pm Sat & Sun 8 am – 6 pm

If you are a Secaucus family that needs assistance, please call Secaucus Social Services 201-330-2014.

Coming up in November:

Senior Bingo Night is back! 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 3 at the Secaucus Senior Center, 101 Centre Ave. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Reservations required; call the same senior office 201-865-4422 to reserve.

Secaucus Veterans Ceremony, Nov. 11. 11 a.m. at town hall. All who served are welcome and will be honored. Refreshments will be served.

Children’s Bingo Night Thursday, Nov. 13 Secaucus Senior Center 101 Centre Ave 6 p.m. (doors open at 5:30 p.m.) 1st through 8th grade adult supervision required and prizes will be awarded. No reservations required; just show up.

Secaucus Boy Scout Troop 22 Pasta Dinner Saturday, November 22 5:30 - 8:30 p.m.

In the basement of Immaculate Conception Catholic church, 1219 Paterson Plank Rd, Secaucus, NJ 07094. Please park and use the back entrance on Centre Avenue Donation - $10.00 Children 8 years and younger are free.

Nov. 22 Art show at 101 Centre Avenue, and art stations to make your own. 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. There will be art for sale and holiday g

Secaucus Emergency Food Pantry's Holiday Wish List

Stuffing Canned Yams PastaMashed Potatoes Cranberry SauceCanned Corn Marinara SauceMac & Cheese Cookies Turkey Gravy$10 gift cards to local supermarkets (for perishable items-milk, bread, cheese, etc.)

New, Unwrapped Toys needed for less-fortunate children between the ages of 1 to 12 years old. Bring all donations to:

Senior Center—145 Front St—M-F 8-3Special drop-off date: November 15 9 - 12 p.m.

Please call 201-330-2014 to find out how you can help.

A State of Emergency in reaction to a strong, dangerous storm has blanketed the Garden State since Saturday night. As the forecasted 60 mph wind gusts, coastal flooding and several inches of heavy rain encroach on the region, some towns are already feeling the impacts of the severe weather Sunday evening.

On Sunday morning, the National Weather service noted that confidence remained high for major coastal flooding and beach erosion that could be exacerbated by high tide, threatening buildings along the coast.

The flooding and strong, damaging winds gusting to 50-60 MPH along the NJ and DE coasts alongside power outages and havoc inland are what triggered the State of Emergency.

"Starting on Sunday, a dangerous coastal storm will begin to move past our state with extreme weather conditions for several counties, especially those on the Shore," said Acting Governor Tahesha Way. "In preparation for this storm, I am issuing a State of Emergency for all 21 counties out of an abundance of caution, authorizing our state’s emergency services personnel to activate as necessary. I urge all New Jerseyans to exercise caution, monitor local weather forecasts and warnings, stay informed on evacuation protocols, and remain off the roads unless absolutely necessary."

The emergency status will remain until it is determined an emergency no longer exists, officials said.

Barrier island communities and low-lying areas that usually take on water during storms are most at risk here.

Tides are expected to reach 1 to 3 feet above normal. A Coastal Flood Watch will be in place from Sunday morning through Monday evening in Cumberland, Atlantic, Cape May, Ocean, southeastern Burlington, Middlesex and Monmouth counties.

"While that sounds like a lot, it is important to keep in mind that this will be falling over a 36 to 48 hour period," National Weather Service forecasters said. "It has been quite dry as well."

Flooding due to heavy rain alone is expected to be limited to poor drainage and urban areas. But that much rainfall could worsen coastal flooding with moderate to major impacts already expected.

Since the storm is still evolving, not all details are set in stone. Patch will share updates as they become available.