Minor Changes to Rosa Selection Process Finalized

A minor change to Rosa International Middle School’s open enrollment process, which would affect a handful of students in two neighborhoods, sailed through final approval by the Cherry Hill school board Tuesday night.

District boundaries that split Johnson Elementary’s fifth-graders between Carusi and Beck middle schools, which prompted concerns from parents last spring, are being modified to allow students in the 08034 zip code—essentially the Kresson Woods and Haddontowne developments—to have the option of enrolling at Beck instead of being districted to Carusi, and would be treated as Beck students in the Rosa selection process.

Parents brought those concerns last year during the Rosa open enrollment period, and policy committee chairman Steven Robbins said a total of about 17 kids could be affected by the change—they’d have to opt for either Beck or Carusi as their home school first, and could also apply for enrollment at Rosa.

“If they don’t get in (to Rosa), they go back to the default,” he said.

That change would go into effect for students heading to middle school in the 2014 school year, school officials said, and wouldn’t affect former Johnson students already in middle school.

It was the only substantive change to the Rosa process this year; though the board had been weighing the possibility of wiping out the lottery and requiring students to make a firm commitment to attend Rosa if selected, Robbins said there wasn't enough time to fully weigh the effects of a change like that.

It could be back on the table for the 2014-2015 school year, however.

“We are still reviewing other potential changes, but not for this year,” Robbins said.

Rosa will also remain an open enrollment middle school for the foreseeable future, as well, despite plenty of feedback from the public about potentially making it a neighborhood school.

Logistically, it’s not something that could be done short-term, Robbins said.

“Given our many, many constraints and what it would take to do a full-blown redistricting, what it would take to retrofit Rosa…that’s just not something we’re going to be able to accomplish in the current cycle,” Robbins said previously. “The neighborhood school is just not in the cards in the near future.”