Advance Robbinsville
SEPTEMBER 2025 FREE
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Homegrown grads return Robbinsville grads return to teach third grade at Sharon School
BY BILL SANSERVINO
Lisa Rich is the new athletic director for Robbinsville High School. (Photo by Rich Fisher.)
The Robbinsville Public School District is welcoming two alumni to its ranks of talented teachers for the 202526 school year. Julianne Clark and Brynn Hopkins will both teach third grade at Sharon Elementary School, bringing their previous experience as students in the district back to the classroom. Clark is a member of the Robbinsville High School Class of 2015 and attended Rider University following graduation. After college, she taught
first grade at the St. Raphael School in Hamilton. A lifelong Robbinsville resident, she said that the teachers in the district inspired her to pursue her own career in education. “When I was growing up, my teachers made me excited to come to school every day,” she said. “Having that excitement around learning was a gift I’m excited to give back to students in Robbinsville.” When she’s not teaching, Clark is an avid reader, a passion she brings into the classroom every day. She says she is looking forward to instructing third graders because they are at the age where they are reading to learn, not simply learning to read. See TEACHERS, Page 12
Lisa Rich named Robbinsville Arm in Arm hits the road High School athletic director to fight food insecurity BY RICH FISHER
If Lisa Rich is as good an athletic director as she was a softball coach, some great things are on the horizon for the Robbinsville High School sports teams. From 2016-21 (with 2020 canceled due to COVID-19), Rich’s Ravens teams went 11322 with three state championships and two Mercer County Tournament titles. “I’ll be honest, one of the hardest programs to manage at our school is the softball program,” former RHS Athletic Director Tom Brettell said. “It’s been highly
successful, but that’s not an easy job and she was able to go in there and keep that program at the level it was when she inherited it. I think she’ll do the same thing with the athletic department.” Brettell is now an RHS vice principal and was on the search committee along with Vice Principal Nicole Mumpower, Principal Molly Avery and former AD Curtis Wyers (now a Pond Road assistant principal). Brettell and Wyers both know what it takes to run an athletic program. “She’s got all the skills for an AD,” See RICH, Page 23
BY GRACE MURPHY
As a line of families stretched outside a branch of the Mercer County Library system one recent weekday morning, volunteers from the Arm in Arm mobile food pantry unloaded crates of fresh produce, rice, and eggs — just one stop of many made each week to help fight hunger in communities within the county. Launched during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arm in Arm’s mobile pantry has become a vital resource for families struggling
with high food prices, reduced benefits, and limited access to healthy groceries. Operating six days a week, the truck stops at libraries, youth centers, and housing organizations throughout the area, including at the Lawrence Branch of the Mercer County Library every week. A full schedule is available at arminarm.org. Arm In Arm, formerly known as The Crisis Ministry, was founded in 1980 by leaders of Nassau Presbyterian Church and Trinity Church in Princeton to assist community members facing See ARM IN ARM, Page 10
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