Rosa Middle School Lottery to Get Administrative Review

Cherry Hill school administrators will review the Rosa International Middle School lottery system and middle school choice in the district and weigh potential changes to both, following a recommendation from the school board Tuesday night.

The move comes following input from parents over the last several weeks, both at the board’s regular and committee meetings, who raised concerns generally about the lottery process and specifically about two neighborhoods in James Johnson Elementary’s territory.

While it’s only a few kids—just four this year, though potentially more in any given year—from Kresson Woods and Haddontowne affected by the situation, board police committee chairman Steve Robbins said it was more a question of reviewing the entire process.

“This was not about their four students, this is about the policy,” he said. “I’d be thrilled to take a look at the whole thing.”

The one thing not up for consideration, Robbins said, is redistricting and turning Rosa into a neighborhood school—at least as far as the board’s policy committee, which advanced the issue, is concerned.

But parents at the meeting said a petition they started which addresses that very issue would seem to indicate otherwise, and pointed to what they said were problems with transparency and how the system works—or fails to work.

“I think you’d be surprised at how many people want the lottery to go away,” said Heather Ford, one of several parents who originally raised the issue with the two neighborhoods back in March.

She reiterated many of the same concerns parents from the neighborhoods made at the March meeting, talking of the alienation families feel because of how the middle school lines are drawn around them.

While she pressed on the issue of turning Rosa into a neighborhood school, she said it was a relief to hear the board take some action.

“I’m glad that it is going to the administration,” she said.

Board members said they sympathized with the angst generated by the annual lottery and cited that as one reason to recommend administrators take a closer look at how things might be changed.

“I think it’s worth it that we review it,” board member Sherrie Cohen said.

What board members didn’t do was speculate about what those changes might look like, deferring to Superintendent Maureen Reusche and other administrators in the district to come up with specifics and present them at a later date.

“I think we can have a more informed discussion then,” said board member Seth Klukoff. “Big picture, it’s a discussion we have to have as a board.”

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