Moorestown School District Names New Superintendent

MOORESTOWN, NJ — After a four-month search, the Moorestown Public School District has a new superintendent.

The Board of Education unanimously approved the hiring of Michael J. Volpe as the district’s permanent superintendent at its meeting Tuesday night.

Volpe will assume the role effective Dec. 18. Scott McCartney was the district superintendent before he retired earlier this summer. Leonard Fitts had been serving as the interim superintendent.

“Mr. Volpe was selected from an exceptional pool of outstanding educational leaders as the right leader to support our district as we continue to excel and reach the next level of excellence for all of our students,” Board of Education President Caryn Shaw said. “Michael Volpe has held numerous leadership roles in high-performing districts, and as we look to the future, we believe Mr. Volpe will provide thoughtful, dynamic and innovative leadership.”

Volpe currently serves as the Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources for the Princeton Public School District.

During his tenure, Volpe created and implemented the F.A.C.E. Forward program to grow and recruit administrators of color. He also overhauled hiring practices to increase administrative and certified staff diversity, according to the Princeton Public School District.

Last spring, Volpe was elected chair of Central Jersey PRIDE's legislative and outreach committee, which is responsible for reaching out to state-level politicians on matters of public education.

Before that, he was the Director of Human Resourcesin Hillsborough Township, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is an alumni of the University of Delaware.

“I am very excited to have Mr. Volpe come on board with us,” Moorestown Board of Education Member Mark Villanueva said. “It’s an exciting time, an interesting time, and I’m really looking forward to moving forward with Mr. Volpe.”

Volpe emerged from a pool of 41 applicants. That list was narrowed to 10, then six and then four before the board made its final decision, Shaw said. The district then submitted its request to the county, and received approval to hire Volpe Tuesday morning.

“Over the past four months, the board’s most important work has been to focus on the permanent superintendent search,” Shaw said. “I want to thank the whole school community for their willingness to be involved in the process of determining the characteristics of the next superintendent. This has helped guide our search firm in screening candidates, and has helped the board in our interview process. There were many strong candidates in our application pool. I want to say a big thank you to Dr. Fitts for coming in as interim superintendent and jumping right in to ensure a smooth beginning of the school year, especially during these challenging times.”

With reporting by Sarah Salvadore, Patch Staff

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