At the Nov. 12 Cherry Hill board of education meeting, Superintendent Dr. Kwame Morton addressed the recent incident where a list of at least 92 student names who had opted out of family life/sex-ed curriculum that was raised by a parent and former board of education candidate Harvey Vasquez at the previous board of education meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 29
During an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request, the names had not been properly redacted were able to be seen by the public regarding opting out of the family life curriculum.
The OPRA request was submitted to the district in 2023 through OPRAmachine.com, Morton recounted, on behalf of an organization, New Jersey Public Education Coalition.
“When the information was provided to them a few weeks later, the information was redacted but it was redacted in PDF format,” Morton said. “We later learned that that redaction in PDF format was able to be undone or viewed in HTML format and the request was made by the district to have that information taken down and replaced. Then again, as we said last meeting, we learned that was not the case.”
He noted that the district attorney, Paul Green, had been working with the New Jersey Public Education Coalition and that they were able to have the information officially removed, and that the information was confirmed to be removed on Nov. 4.
On Nov. 5, he shared that a letter was sent to inform the families for those 92 names that had appeared on the list, and also to the 82 names that they were uncertain if they had appeared on the list. Moving forward, Morton said that the district will “explore opportunities for training our administrative staff and the full team as well on redaction of information.”
“If you look at the information that was sent to him, you’d never known it was possible to be converted to another format, so I think that’s the message for us,” Morton said. “Moving forward, we have to ensure that the confidentiality of our students and personal information is protected.”
The board also gave updates on the preschool expansion which is a five-year process that started in 2022 and will end in 2028.
The five-year plan for growth anticipates adding 41 additional classrooms in the 2025-26 school year, with 16 in-district and 25 provider sites, 25 additional classes provided by provider sites in 2026-27 and 27 additional classrooms in 2027-28, also provided by provider sites.
Farah Mahan, who led the presentation, acknowledged that last year they had three more additional classrooms than anticipated, bringing the total number to 17 this year which allowed them to serve 189 preschool students last year.
This year, they had one more classroom than they anticipated which allowed a total of 309 preschool expansion students, an increase of 120 students from last year.
Next year, they are looking to add eight additional classrooms to the Estelle V. Malberg Early Childhood Education Center, eight classrooms at Joyce Kilmer Elementary School, and three additional private providers, while still seeking 12 classroom additions.
“If we’re able to bring this to fruition, this would increase our preschool universe to approximately 924 students,” Mahan said.
