Eastside's Mitch Lowenthal sits down with Cherry Hill Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Morton Sherman, whose resignation takes effect in December.

Lowenthal: Since you were hired as the Superintendent of Cherry Hill Public Schools in 1997, how have your previous experiences in New York and Connecticut influenced your decision making skills and helped you grow as an administrator?

Sherman: When I think of my experiences first starting in Connecticut, I think of some very specific student incidents, and even now when I shape who I am as administrator mentally, I try to structure what I do, it’s about students. And when I was administrator in Ct, first I was at Westport, Connecticut. I’m not sure if you know Westport Connecticut, beautiful town, on the gold coast what they called in Connecticut, very wealthy. Paul Newman lives in town, Eric Gershon, Harry Reisner lived there. Meatloaf used to coach softball. He did he used to be the softball coach in town. Then I went to another school district called Norwich, Connecticut, and it was at the point of graduation where as a high school principal and superintendent a young woman was passing by and I looked at her, and I remember I had made a decision that I wasn’t pleased with. I supported the administrator who had made a decision that I thought was a little bit harsh, and yet I supported that administrator. All I could think is, I handed that diploma to that girl, I should have made a different decision. So, as she came by me, I mean I can picture her as she came by me I held her for a second, took her hand and said, “I have to apologize to you because I was wrong in not making a decision about you at that time. Instead, I became a little bit of a bureaucrat and supported the administrator. And I really felt badly, and I remember to this day how I did make the decision on the right basis.” So, those early administrative positions in Connecticut- and then in New York, a few other pieces were added to it. I developed the understanding that every decision I make, whether it’s about budget, buying water, is always about what’s best for kids. That’s the only way to make a decision. And then the second list is somewhere else, but that’s the only question on the first list, what’s best for kids? That became very ingrained in who I am and what I believed in. When I went to New York, I built on that kind of experience and I had a couple of experiences where I was faced with a question that I ultimately phrase, “to crèche or not to crèche”. Crèche is a Christmas symbol, the manger. And it came up as to whether or not we should have symbols of religion in the school. It became a huge national controversy in my school system. And it all ultimately resolved itself around the first amendment rights. If you look at First Amendment rights at a guy named Charles Haines who is a friend of mine, he told me that to make decisions not only what’s best upon kids, but within the framework of our documents as a country. So, if you look at the civic virtues that surround the Constitution and this is Constitution week as we’re having this conversation; if you look at those civic virtues it talks about the rights of individuals, and the First Amendment has five liberties. Two of which are freedom of speech and freedom to assemble, also the Establishment Clause, and I began to think, when you make your decisions, in order to understand, when you make your decisions, it’s about what’s best for kids, with then what is the role of education? Education has a role, as far as I’m concerned, in creating literate participating citizens in our democracy. And that’s what it’s all about, and anything else again is secondary. So, those two huge sources of experience in my life helped shape who I am as a person and what I do as an educator.

Lowenthal: What do you feel has been your greatest accomplishment while Superintendent of Cherry Hill Public Schools?

Sherman: Picking up with the explanation of what effected me before I came to Cherry Hill about students and about civic virtues and putting things into context of people and our framing founding father documents, there have been issues here in Cherry Hill which reflect the United States. Not all students achieve to their highest levels, whether it’s the brightest kid in the school, or the lowest achiever in the school. And I think my greatest accomplishment has been to say all kids and achieve at very high levels. We’ve added AP courses, six more than when I came here. We’ve added the IB course at West. But those are just programs, more than that, what we’ve said is that you really can do better, the kids who are taking the Intel Science Program. Are you familiar with that? When I proposed it in 1999 not one kid was involved and we have over 60 kids involved through the Intel Program this year. So, we use the phrase now called “blowing away the ceiling and raising the floor”. There should be no ceiling for the brightest kids, and at the same time, kids should not be allowed to languish in the bottom by just not doing much at school. We’ve done away with a lot of the lower level courses, the M level courses, and we’re pushing kids to take R level courses, and we’re pushing the R level kids to take A level and H level courses. I think that general awareness, it has not always been successful, I know that, but at least a conversation is taking place in our community about each and every kid without exception of achieving at higher levels.

[The rest of this interview will be released when the first issue of Eastside is published.]