Cherry Hill set to name longtime administrator Kwame Morton as its new school superintendent

After a nine-month national search, the Cherry Hill school district has tapped an insider as its next school superintendent.

In a statement posted on its website, Cherry Hill Public Schools announced Kwame Morton, 51, a longtime administrator in the South Jersey school system, as the final candidate in a search. The board reviewed 10 candidates from a total of 38 applicants submitted by search firm Hazard Young Atea Associates; three of five candidates selected by the board were interviewed for a final round, the district said.

The board is expected to consider a resolution at its meeting Tuesday to submit Morton’s contract to be approved by the executive county superintendent. Terms for the contract were not disclosed.

If approved, Morton would succeed Joseph Meloche, who stepped down in July after leading the state’s 11th-largest school system for eight years to became superintendent in the Rose Tree Media School District. Cherry Hill had said it could take a year to select a superintendent.

» READ MORE: Rose Tree Media School District approves contract for Cherry Hill Superintendent Joseph Meloche

Morton could face some tough financial decisions ahead for the district. Morton and board President Miriam Stern have sounded an alarm that Cherry Hill may have a $6.9 million cut in state aid for the 2024-2025 school year.

For the first time in the state’s history, Gov. Phil Murphy has proposed fully funding the formula used to award school aid to New Jersey’s more than 600 school districts. Cherry Hill, however, is among about 100 districts that would see a reduction in aid.

Cherry Hill said it had seen an increase in state aid in recent years and was surprised by the projected decrease for the upcoming school year.

“We are shocked that the state, having increased our aid consistently during the last four years after decades of staggering and harmful underfunding, has cut our aid to less than what we received in 2022-2023,” Stern and Morton wrote in a letter to the community. “This decrease in funding is undeserved considering our steady enrollment.”

» READ MORE: Cherry Hill voters approved a $363 million school bond referendum, N.J.’s largest in at least a decade

Cherry Hill enrolls about 10,700 students in 19 schools, including two high schools, an alternative high school program, 12 elementary schools, and three middle schools.

Morton was named acting superintendent in July for the 2023-2024 school year. He has spent 16 years in the district after joining in 2008 as principal of principal at the Joyce Kilmer Elementary School.

» READ MORE: Principal named for next year at Cherry Hill West

He was the district’s first African American high school principal at Cherry Hill High School West and was named NJ Visionary Principal of the Year/National Association of Secondary School Principals’ NJ State Principal of the Year in 2021. He also served as an assistant superintendent for pre-K and curriculum and instruction.

In a 2013 interview with The Inquirer, Morton said his leadership style has always been focused on forming relationships with students, teachers, and staff.

“I found,” he said, “what you gave out to the kids is what you got back.”

Morton previously was the principal of the Frederick Douglass Mastery Charter Elementary School in North Philadelphia, where he was assigned as a “turnaround specialist,” trained through a University of Virginia program to improve low-performing schools. He also was an assistant principal at the now-closed Thomas Fitzsimmons High School, also in North Philadelphia.

A Brooklyn, N.Y., native, Morton grew up on Coney Island and began his career in New York City, where he spent about 10 years as a teacher and school administrator. He also worked in Gloucester County.

He obtained a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Clarion University, where he was a standout basketball player and holds several school records. He received a master’s degree in educational leadership from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, N.Y., and a doctorate in educational leadership from North Central University.

He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. He and his wife, April, have 10 children (”none of them twins, either,” he once quipped) and one grandchild.