Cherry Hill School District to move to junior high model, citing about $3 million in savings

Dr. Kwame Morton, Cherry Hill School District superintendent, said the district will move its middle schools to a junior high model to respond to a roughly $4,000,000 drop in state aid and to realize approximately $3,000,000 in savings. The plan, explained in a district podcast interview with Dr. Neal Burdi, director of secondary education, will shift scheduling, cap class sizes and add a supervised end-of-day period called WIN ("What I Need").

District officials said the change replaces the middle-school team and advisory structure with a departmentalized schedule similar to Cherry Hill East and West high schools. "A middle school model, as we've come to know it in Cherry Hill, really...centers on the notion of starting the day with advisory, having a team structure," Burdi said, adding that the junior high model will move toward…