Catch up on the biggest stories in Moorestown this week.
The Moorestown Township school district held an open forum on school safety, and a group of area teens gave back to their community . Catch up on everything from the past week in the Weekly Roundup.
School safety a ‘constant conversation’ for Moorestown school district
Last Wednesday, the William Allen Middle School media center became a safe space to address hard issues. The evening marked the first discussion titled “A Forum on School Safety and Security” in the first of the Moorestown Township Board of Education’s Community Engagement Series. School administrators, board members and parents came together to have roundtable discussions about how Moorestown is keeping students safe and the work that still needs to be done. “We take very seriously this concept: when you send your kids to school, they are our kids,” said Superintendent Scott McCartney.
Jewish teens inspired by international day to make a local impact
On Sunday, April 15, more than 50 teens from Moorestown and the surrounding area came together at the Moorestown Community House to work on 10 hands-on service projects, the byproducts of which having been distributed to local nonprofits and charities throughout the subsequent weeks. The J-Serve event hosted by the Moorestown Jewish Association Teen Group and the Moorestown-Mount Laurel BBYO was part of the International Day of Jewish Youth Service, which has taken place in Jewish communities throughout the world since 2005.
District ‘trialing’ new parent-teacher conference schedule
Following the approval of the Moorestown Township school district calendar in late February, administrators got to work building the internal calendar. Parent-teacher conferences proved a topic of much debate in previous Board of Education meetings, and at last Tuesday night’s meeting, Superintendent Scott McCartney revealed the plan for handling conferences.The plan for November’s conference schedule is to employ a combination of early dismissal and late arrival days to accommodate a variety of parents’ schedules, McCartney said.
Board passes changes to class size policy on first reading
At last Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, the board passed changes to the district class size policy on first reading. The update is the first in 10 years to the policy’s language. The new policy states class sizes in elementary grades “shall generally not exceed” 25 students and not exceed 22 students in kindergarten. Under the new policy, the superintendent must notify the Board of Education at its next meeting if a class size falls outside of the outlined range. Under the current policy, the superintendent is not required to notify the board or public when the class size exceeds guidelines.
