Cherry Hill Public Schools uses a smartphone app called STOPit for anonymous reporting, which is designed to handle bullying complaints, not broader threats. A Cherry Hill High School West alumna wants the state to close that gap before another school year begins.

Dr. Liz Schopfer, West's 2009 valedictorian and now a school counselor in neighboring Pine Hill, presented her research on school-based threat assessment at the American School Counselor Association's annual conference July 11-14 in New Orleans. Her central argument: New Jersey districts need to stop relying on patchwork tools and adopt a unified statewide tipline.

"Many of the tasks of the Threat Assessment are falling on already overburdened school staff, with insufficient time, resources and personnel to address both threat assessment and the other needs of the school community," Schopfer told Patch in a July 31 interview.

What Cherry Hill currently uses

The district deploys STOPit specifically to comply with New Jersey's Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying law. According to the district's website, the app is framed as an HIB reporting mechanism, not a comprehensive threat-assessment tipline of the kind Schopfer advocates. Students and parents download it with school-specific access codes.

Schopfer's research highlights that school staff lack time for threat-assessment training, team meetings and follow-up. A dedicated statewide system, she argues, would centralize tips and free counselors to focus on intervention rather than intake.

Legislation stalled in Trenton

Schopfer's push aligns with a bill already sitting in the state Legislature. Senate Bill S2527, introduced in January, would direct the Attorney General to establish a statewide anonymous school-threat reporting program. A predecessor bill advanced unanimously out of the Assembly Education Committee in October 2024 but died when the session ended. S2527 has not moved beyond introduction.

The proposed system would mirror Colorado's Safe2Tell program, which accepts tips by phone, text, website and app. Pine Hill, where Schopfer works, already partners with Sandy Hook Promise, whose Say Something Anonymous Reporting System has received more than 403,000 tips nationally and claims to have prevented 19 planned school shootings.

Local context

School safety is not abstract in Cherry Hill. The Cherry Hill Police Department assisted campus police with a threat investigation in February 2025, and Sharp Elementary and Beck Middle School went into a shelter-in-place in April 2026 during a nearby police investigation.

The district appointed Anthony Saporito, Director of Security, as School Safety Specialist for 2026-27 at the board's May 26 meeting. Under state guidelines, threat-assessment teams should include an administrator, a teacher, a safety specialist, a law-enforcement liaison and a counselor.

What's next

The Cherry Hill Board of Education holds its next work session Tuesday, August 11, and its next regular action meeting Tuesday, August 25, at the Arthur Lewis Administration Building, 45 Ranoldo Terrace. Whether the district will weigh in on S2527 or evaluate alternatives to STOPit remains unclear. The district has not publicly responded to Schopfer's recommendations.