In the past 13 years, Mt. Laurel Superintendent of Schools Antoinette Rath introduced students to STEM, organized community summits to allow parents, residents and township officials to have their voice heard within the school district, and was named both the Burlington County Woman of the Year in Education and Burlington County Superintendent of the Year.
On Sept. 8, Rath’s 13-year tenure as the leader of the Mt. Laurel School District will end. Rath is leaving the district to take a new position as chief executive officer at Collegium Charter School in Exton, Pa.
Rath announced she would step down last Wednesday. She described the day as both bittersweet and exciting, saying while she was ready to take on a new challenge at Collegium, she is sad to leave Mt. Laurel.
A number of things factored into Rath’s decision to leave the Mt. Laurel School District. She said her family was already looking to move from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.
“My extended family is all in Pennsylvania, so we knew we were coming to Pennsylvania anyway,” she said. “This opportunity presented itself and it seemed like a fantastic opportunity for me.”
Rath was hired in 2002 as superintendent in Mt. Laurel after previously serving as the deputy superintendent for Cherry Hill Public Schools. Since then, she has cultivated an open, family-like atmosphere where everyone from parents to students and staff were invited to offer suggestions and give feedback on the schools.
Rath said the family-like atmosphere is what she’s going to miss most about Mt. Laurel.
“I’m going to miss the climate and culture of our school community, our staff, our administrators, our students,” she said. “It was such a climate of cooperation. We’re truly a family. I’m going to miss that.”
Rath has helped launch a number of initiatives in the district. In the past few years, the district added science, technology, engineering and math classes to its curriculum. Rath also pushed upgrading the school’s technology with the purchase of Chromebooks for students and finding ways to integrate the new technology in various subject areas.
Rath said the focus of the initiative the district went forward with in her tenure as superintendent was always on the students.
“I’m most proud of the fact that all of those initiatives put the students first,” she said. “That has been our undercurrent since the day I got there. Every initiative that has been relatively new over the past 13 years has been developed and at its foundation has been what we needed to do for the community.”
Rath hopes to bring the same culture and fresh ideas to her new school at Collegium. She said one of the most exciting parts of the new job is being able to bring some of the culture she built in Mt. Laurel and spread it to a new school community.
“I look forward to meeting new people, creating new opportunities and leading a charter school district that has opened its arms to me,” she said.
The search for a new superintendent in the Mt. Laurel School District will begin in just a few weeks. The board of education plans to begin discussions on the process at its next meeting on July 21.
