Catch up on the biggest stories in Moorestown this week.
The Moorestown School District is dealing with rising class sizes, and a former Moorestown resident has risen to CEO of a leading pharmaceuticals company. Catch up on everything from the past week in the Weekly Roundup.
Class size on the rise
A spike in enrollment during late August had the Moorestown Board of Education approving a waiver of the district’s class size policy at its Tuesday, Sept. 19 meeting. The unprecedented increase was the topic of much discussion about how to handle growing class sizes both in the short and long term. Superintendent Scott McCartney said in the last two weeks of August, the district received 93 new enrollments. He said virtually every school except for Moorestown High School has seen a substantial increase. The increase had McCartney asking the board for a waiver of the class size policy for a fifth-grade math class and an a.m. kindergarten class.
Former Moorestown resident and soon-to-be CEO ‘excited about the possibilities ahead’
In 1994, Vasant Narasimhan graduated from Moorestown High School. In 2018, Narasimhan graduates to chief executive officer of Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis AG. His passion for helping people took the former Moorestown resident from New Jersey to Basel, Switzerland, where he currently resides, poised to take over as the head of one of Europe’s largest drugmakers on Feb. 1. Novartis AG is a multinational pharmaceutical company and is consistently ranked as one the world’s second largest pharmaceutical companies raking in billions of dollars each year. The company boasts more than 100,000 employees and has earned recognition recently for their innovative cancer treatment reconfiguring the body’s own immune cells to fight cancer.
Department of Parks and Rec. highlighting Sean Fischel Connect’s community impact
The Sean Fischel Connect organization has become best known for the annual 5K Run and Fun Walk it hosts in honor of young Sean Fischel, who lost his tragic struggle against his undetected illness, HLH (Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis). Following his death in January 2013, the Fischels and their close friends created the annual run in his honor to provide a way of both thanking the community and honoring Sean together. This year, Sean Fischel Connect will host its final 5K and Fun Run to benefit organizations that make a difference in the lives of children. The Moorestown Department of Parks and Recreation thanks Sean Fischel Connect for its continued support. The Department encourages all readers to donate to, sponsor or participate in the 2017, Fifth and Final Sean Fischel Connect community run.
