Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It has been a really long time since I was in the schools, so please take this with a gigantic grain of salt.
But from my perspective -- and, again, this is one of those "no one talk about this openly" discussion points -- there is a huge difference in the education your child would get depending on what neighborhood grade school he or she goes to. And it has ALWAYS been like this.
Some of the schools may have different sending blocks now. The school system is also a LOT bigger than when I graduated in the 90s since there was just such an influx of kids.
Since you asked about Kelly Elementary (which is the old Pleasantdale): You'll very likely have a really good educational experience for your kids. Most of the students will come from two-parents households. Most of the parents will be college educated and will have professional-class jobs. At least a few will work in New York City. There will be a large percentage of non-Orthodox Jewish students. Most of the teachers have been there for years and years and years, so there is a large amount of institutional knowledge.
But compare that to Washington. I went to Washington from K-2. The school was in bad physical shape back then, and this was 30-35 years ago. I have no idea if there were any rebuilding efforts there or not. But, being both West Orange and America, I highly doubt it. It was considered the poor white trash school when I was a kid. Now, going from a federal website I'm on, the school is almost fully minority and has over 80% of the student population classified as low income.
Washington's sending goes from Harrison Ave. and Main Street to roughly Park Avenue and Main Street all the way to the Orange and Montclair borders. A lot of this area is what is called "Tory Corner." This is the heart of "Down The Hill." The ethnic makeup of the school changed starting in the 90s. It's now largely Hispanic (Salvadoran, Mexican, Dominican) and African-American/Caribbean.
The sending might have changed because of student populations. I believe some kids from Washington were getting bused to one of the schools up the hill at one point but I'm not sure at all. Washington when I went there in the early 80s was mostly all-white kids ranging from middle class (think: teacher salaries) to a good percentage of students who qualified for reduced or free lunch.
I will say this: The principal at Washington has been there for a few decades. She's a lovely, lovely woman.
One thing that always irked me was the differences you could see (and only talk about privately) in honors and AP classes at WOHS and what grade school they went to. They tilted very heavily into the wealthier neighborhood schools. I was in a few honors/AP classes and was in many cases one of the only two or three kids from Down The Hill in a class of 25 or so. There's definitely an advantage into getting into an honors or AP class when you have parents who understand how the game is played and have careers where they don't have to beg a manager to take off for a few hours to pester a guidance counselor. I think there was just always sort of an unspoken bias for kids who were on the cut line of being in AP or not towards kids who came from the "good" elementary schools.
The grade schools in the "good" neighborhoods are St. Cloud, Kelly and Mt. Pleasant (which I think is still open). Gregory and Redwood are the only to elementary schools that mix both Up-The-Hill and Down-The-Hill kids, but the DTH neighborhoods are solidly middle class. Washington and Hazel (which is The Valley) both have student populations that are lower income and tilt more minority.
The grade schools all go K-5. Then from there everyone goes to Edison for Grade Six. Then you go to either Roosevelt or Liberty for 7-8 and then off to West Orange High School.
There are so many conflicting reports about what WOHS is like. But it has always been like that. If you were from a wealthy neighborhood and in all AP classes, you could really likely be in a bubble where your entire high school existence was with students just like you and have no idea about anything else. If you were not in those classes and from one of the lower-income neighborhoods, you could very likely see a fistfight every single day. The only time students from either of those groups would have any interaction would be in the hallway, lunch, or gym.
There are people I'm friends with on Facebook -- and good friends with even back in high school -- who had no idea about the type of things me and other people I'm friends with are talking about regarding craziness.
There was also in the mid-90s a legitimate race riot over the course of a few days. This happened after I left by I had family members at the school during the time. It made the Star-Ledger. One of my favorite things I ever read on one of the town Facebook pages was when people blamed it on kids from other towns. Like, yeah, sure, kids from other towns were running into an English class to swing a lock at some random person's face.
Like I said: It's such an interesting place. It's honestly the most "real" place you'll find. You can literally find any type of person in West Orange. But there are no kumbaya singalongs about diversity like you'd find in Montclair. It's actual diversity, and not everyone sees eye-to-eye all of the time.
There are warts. But you really get to experience what it's like to see kids with means interact with classmates who don't have resources. No one from Short Hills is interacting with kids from East Orange. Livingston might be a "better" school but I'm really glad I had such a unique look at things.
Hi there. I am from West Orange. I haven't lived there in a few decades but am still in the town and area good amount. Some things have changed a lot since I last lived there. For instance, Maplewood-South Orange were still really sleepy suburbs before they became "SoMa." They also changed the grade structures of the elementary-middle-high school. We only had two middle schools the last time I lived in town as the third wasn't built yet.
Pleasantdale is a really nice, quiet section of town. It's a bigger neighborhood. It has that name because it's the area kids who go what is now Kelly Elementary (formerly Pleasantdale) go to. I don't know if the catchment area changed at all, but some parts of what you'd consider Pleasantdale also go to Redwood..
The intersection of Eagle Rock and Pleasant Valley Way is a little commercial strip. The Bagel Box is in that stretch and has been a beloved local establishment for decades. Mark & Julie's Ice Cream is there, too, and is great.
The area does have a good amount of Orthodox Jews and Temples. A lot (if not most) of the Orthodox kids go to Solomon Schecter or other private schools.
Pleasant Valley Way is a really big road that runs from Verona to Millburn. The Monkees song "Pleasant Valley Sunday" actually takes it's name from that street. The song was written by Carol King who lived in West Orange for a while.
West Orange High School is also in Pleasantdale and is right across the street from the elementary school. Degnan Field (and Degnan Pond) is right next to the high school. I'm not sure if they still have ice skating or not on the pond, but they did have that there for a long time.
Here is a bigger picture view of West Orange, because it's truly fascinating.
West Orange is essentially two towns in one. (Or maybe even three, considering Llewellyn Park is in the middle of WO and is a gigantic private, gated community with multimillion dollar homes.) A lot of people from WO will not talk about this openly but get anyone behind closed doors and they will.
There is "Up The Hill" and there is "Down The Hill."
West Orange is on a pretty steep hill, for Jersey standards. Anything "above" Prospect Avenue or Gregory Ave. on the other end of town is considered Up The Hill. These include Pleasantdale, St. Cloud, a lot of Gregory, the area around Redwood, etc.
Up The Hill is very suburban in character. It goes from middle-class to really wealthy in a lot of the neighborhoods up by Livingston or around St. Cloud School. There's a really big Jewish population in WO beyond the Orthodox Temples. The parents of kids I knew from Up The Hill had jobs like "lawyer" or "accountant" or "worked in finance in New York" or "owned a successful small business." The Up The Hill neighborhoods largely started being built in the 40s and 50s and a lot more in the 60s. If you ever read any of Philip Roth's books about growing up in Newark, most of his characters move to those parts of West Orange. That's how the town's Jewish population really started to grow.
I grew up Down The Hill. Down The Hill is more urban in terms of housing stock and feel. Down The Hill was not started as a suburb but as a mini-city. Thomas Edison built his big factories on Main Street, which attracted a lot of immigrants from Ireland (via New York or Newark). This is why there's a huge St. Patty's Day Parade in West Orange. There were a lot of kids I grew up with whose parents grew up in West Orange after their grandparents settled there to work in the factories or something adjacent to them.
A lot of Italians also moved to Down The Hill (and Up The Hill depending on how much money they had) from the North Ward after Newark got really rough in the 50s and 60s and in the immediate aftermath of the riots. This is actually a sub-plot of The Sopranos as that's where Tony's parents moved the family to in the late 60s. A high school Tony actually wears a West Orange varsity jacket in a flashback.
Down The Hill was always more working class with some pockets of poverty in the neighborhoods right next to Orange.
I lived in one of the nicer parts of Down The Hill known as Lourdes after the big Catholic Church in the neighborhood. At the time, most of my friends went to Catholic school and then Seton Hall Prep if their parents could afford it. The adults in my neighborhood had jobs like "fireman" or "landscaper" or "teacher" or "union contractor." Lourdes school has been closed for a while now but the church is still open.
Main Street was always dumpy and seedy. The Edison Factories on Main Street stopped being such in the 50s or 60s. They were then left to rot as some crappy retail thing that had a gym, a rug store and nothing else and a few homeless people would squat in there from time to time. They were just these gross eyesores forever. There was a really shady deal involving the town council and their handpicked developer (whose ownership could not be traced) where the factories were going to be redeveloped into yuppie condos. This took about two decades before they came to fruition just in the past few years and all sorts of issues with taxpayers being left secretly on the hook, etc.
The neighborhood behind the factories has Watchung Ave. and a few of those streets. Those have always been pretty rough. On the other end of town by South Orange is what's called "The Valley." A lot of The Valley is really similar and fairly run down.
Down The Hill started having a bigger black and Hispanic population in the 90s. There was a good amount of White Flight in that time period. Main Street now has a good amount of Mexican/Salvadoran restaurants. Old-timers from West Orange will say that's when Down The Hill "got bad" but it was always sort of sketchy.
I have no idea how it is now, but there was very little interaction between Down The Hill and Up The Hill residents. The only two grade schools that had kids from both sides of town were Redwood and Gregory -- and most of the down the hill kids who would go to Redwood went to Catholic School. Washington and Hazel were only for kids in those neighborhoods. There were even two separate Little League baseball leagues. The first time you could really see interactions among kids from different backgrounds was in middle school.
You really could have completely different experiences. Even though I was DTH, I went to public schools my whole life. I'll write about some crazy, insane thing that happened (and West Orange has a lot of them) and people I was friends with from UTH will have absolutely no idea any of that happened. If you were in all AP classes, the only time you'd have to associate with the more riff-raff kids was in lunch or gym. But if you were in non-honors classes or had to take the bus home to DTH, all bets were off as to the kinds of nuts things you'd see. Fights. Kids lighting up joints in class. Someone once set fire to the bus I was on. I saw an adult bus monitor get off of the bus to fight some dirtbag who lived a few blocks from me.
When I graduated high school in the mid-90s, I think West Orange High School may have had more languages spoken at home than any other school outside of Jersey City, since there are also a decent amount of Asian, Indian and Caribbean families, too. It was really diverse then, but it wasn't a fake diversity. It could get ugly, especially as this was when a lot of White Flight was happening and there were absolutely racial tensions that got nasty at times.
I also had friends from UTH whose parents wouldn't let them come to my house because they thought my neighborhood was dangerous, even though my section was absolutely fine.
Again: Talking about the vast differences of income disparity and racial makeup among the town is NOT something anyone in West Orange wants to or will ever talk about publicly. But people absolutely will privately.
But I really do love that town and the experiences I had. Very few people get the chance to grow up in a place that's really The Great American Melting Pot since so many places are so homogeneous. But West Orange is the exact opposite of that, and it made me a better person because of it.
I live in West Orange and have owned a home here for about 4 years. I did not grow up in West Orange but was there often as I have family in West Orange. For many years I thought Down the hill was two streets off northfield where you got on 280. I had no idea it was an actual neighborhood where a lot of people lived. Your point about it being 2 towns is spot on as you can live up the hill and have no idea down the hill is the same town. I do think in recent years the down the hill neighborhood has gotten safer and new businesses have opened up which people like myself from up the hill frequent. Hopefully the Edison project makes it even better. Regarding the up the hill areas, they are demographically diverse however I would not think they are that economically diverse. You basically have middle class areas, upper middle class areas and then wealthy areas. Much of the up the hill area looks identical to the surrounding towns. No town is perfect but overall West Orange has schools that are rated well with top tier programs/opportunities. It is also an excellent location for commuting within New Jersey & NYC, many public transportation options between the jitneys to the trains and mid-town buses.
I used to live on this board when I was about to move to West Orange. We have lived here now for 2 years and we are happy, We live "up the hill" in the St Cloud Section and its funny I actually called it Up the Hill back when we first moved here lol. It is a very safe town, Main Street is a little less desirable and I hope it gets better as we are in desperate need of SMB's. They are building "Luxury" condos on Northfield now across from the zoo and hope that can bring in some desperate tax income to the town. My neighbors are iffy, there a few of us that are tight knit and their are others whose names I dont even know and I dont even say hello to. That is fine.. Politics side it leans heavily left which as a centrist I can do without but I have no interest in engaging in political discussions with anyone. The Jitney is semi reliable even prior to covid but some areas do better then others, It depends on the driver I guess. 77 Coach Bus and DeCamp Bus are decent options also that take you straight to port authority.
Overall its as a New Yorker, its a perfect quiet town for raising kids. You pick and choose who you interact with and enjoy your day. Hope this helps!
Great insights into West Orange. I lived next door (South Orange) for many years and they helped clarify some of my observations from random driving around.
Hi there. I am from West Orange. I haven't lived there in a few decades but am still in the town and area good amount. Some things have changed a lot since I last lived there. For instance, Maplewood-South Orange were still really sleepy suburbs before they became "SoMa." They also changed the grade structures of the elementary-middle-high school. We only had two middle schools the last time I lived in town as the third wasn't built yet.
Pleasantdale is a really nice, quiet section of town. It's a bigger neighborhood. It has that name because it's the area kids who go what is now Kelly Elementary (formerly Pleasantdale) go to. I don't know if the catchment area changed at all, but some parts of what you'd consider Pleasantdale also go to Redwood..
The intersection of Eagle Rock and Pleasant Valley Way is a little commercial strip. The Bagel Box is in that stretch and has been a beloved local establishment for decades. Mark & Julie's Ice Cream is there, too, and is great.
The area does have a good amount of Orthodox Jews and Temples. A lot (if not most) of the Orthodox kids go to Solomon Schecter or other private schools.
Pleasant Valley Way is a really big road that runs from Verona to Millburn. The Monkees song "Pleasant Valley Sunday" actually takes it's name from that street. The song was written by Carol King who lived in West Orange for a while.
West Orange High School is also in Pleasantdale and is right across the street from the elementary school. Degnan Field (and Degnan Pond) is right next to the high school. I'm not sure if they still have ice skating or not on the pond, but they did have that there for a long time.
Here is a bigger picture view of West Orange, because it's truly fascinating.
West Orange is essentially two towns in one. (Or maybe even three, considering Llewellyn Park is in the middle of WO and is a gigantic private, gated community with multimillion dollar homes.) A lot of people from WO will not talk about this openly but get anyone behind closed doors and they will.
There is "Up The Hill" and there is "Down The Hill."
West Orange is on a pretty steep hill, for Jersey standards. Anything "above" Prospect Avenue or Gregory Ave. on the other end of town is considered Up The Hill. These include Pleasantdale, St. Cloud, a lot of Gregory, the area around Redwood, etc.
Up The Hill is very suburban in character. It goes from middle-class to really wealthy in a lot of the neighborhoods up by Livingston or around St. Cloud School. There's a really big Jewish population in WO beyond the Orthodox Temples. The parents of kids I knew from Up The Hill had jobs like "lawyer" or "accountant" or "worked in finance in New York" or "owned a successful small business." The Up The Hill neighborhoods largely started being built in the 40s and 50s and a lot more in the 60s. If you ever read any of Philip Roth's books about growing up in Newark, most of his characters move to those parts of West Orange. That's how the town's Jewish population really started to grow.
I grew up Down The Hill. Down The Hill is more urban in terms of housing stock and feel. Down The Hill was not started as a suburb but as a mini-city. Thomas Edison built his big factories on Main Street, which attracted a lot of immigrants from Ireland (via New York or Newark). This is why there's a huge St. Patty's Day Parade in West Orange. There were a lot of kids I grew up with whose parents grew up in West Orange after their grandparents settled there to work in the factories or something adjacent to them.
A lot of Italians also moved to Down The Hill (and Up The Hill depending on how much money they had) from the North Ward after Newark got really rough in the 50s and 60s and in the immediate aftermath of the riots. This is actually a sub-plot of The Sopranos as that's where Tony's parents moved the family to in the late 60s. A high school Tony actually wears a West Orange varsity jacket in a flashback.
Down The Hill was always more working class with some pockets of poverty in the neighborhoods right next to Orange.
I lived in one of the nicer parts of Down The Hill known as Lourdes after the big Catholic Church in the neighborhood. At the time, most of my friends went to Catholic school and then Seton Hall Prep if their parents could afford it. The adults in my neighborhood had jobs like "fireman" or "landscaper" or "teacher" or "union contractor." Lourdes school has been closed for a while now but the church is still open.
Main Street was always dumpy and seedy. The Edison Factories on Main Street stopped being such in the 50s or 60s. They were then left to rot as some crappy retail thing that had a gym, a rug store and nothing else and a few homeless people would squat in there from time to time. They were just these gross eyesores forever. There was a really shady deal involving the town council and their handpicked developer (whose ownership could not be traced) where the factories were going to be redeveloped into yuppie condos. This took about two decades before they came to fruition just in the past few years and all sorts of issues with taxpayers being left secretly on the hook, etc.
The neighborhood behind the factories has Watchung Ave. and a few of those streets. Those have always been pretty rough. On the other end of town by South Orange is what's called "The Valley." A lot of The Valley is really similar and fairly run down.
Down The Hill started having a bigger black and Hispanic population in the 90s. There was a good amount of White Flight in that time period. Main Street now has a good amount of Mexican/Salvadoran restaurants. Old-timers from West Orange will say that's when Down The Hill "got bad" but it was always sort of sketchy.
I have no idea how it is now, but there was very little interaction between Down The Hill and Up The Hill residents. The only two grade schools that had kids from both sides of town were Redwood and Gregory -- and most of the down the hill kids who would go to Redwood went to Catholic School. Washington and Hazel were only for kids in those neighborhoods. There were even two separate Little League baseball leagues. The first time you could really see interactions among kids from different backgrounds was in middle school.
You really could have completely different experiences. Even though I was DTH, I went to public schools my whole life. I'll write about some crazy, insane thing that happened (and West Orange has a lot of them) and people I was friends with from UTH will have absolutely no idea any of that happened. If you were in all AP classes, the only time you'd have to associate with the more riff-raff kids was in lunch or gym. But if you were in non-honors classes or had to take the bus home to DTH, all bets were off as to the kinds of nuts things you'd see. Fights. Kids lighting up joints in class. Someone once set fire to the bus I was on. I saw an adult bus monitor get off of the bus to fight some dirtbag who lived a few blocks from me.
When I graduated high school in the mid-90s, I think West Orange High School may have had more languages spoken at home than any other school outside of Jersey City, since there are also a decent amount of Asian, Indian and Caribbean families, too. It was really diverse then, but it wasn't a fake diversity. It could get ugly, especially as this was when a lot of White Flight was happening and there were absolutely racial tensions that got nasty at times.
I also had friends from UTH whose parents wouldn't let them come to my house because they thought my neighborhood was dangerous, even though my section was absolutely fine.
Again: Talking about the vast differences of income disparity and racial makeup among the town is NOT something anyone in West Orange wants to or will ever talk about publicly. But people absolutely will privately.
But I really do love that town and the experiences I had. Very few people get the chance to grow up in a place that's really The Great American Melting Pot since so many places are so homogeneous. But West Orange is the exact opposite of that, and it made me a better person because of it.
i know this is a super old thread at this point but i went to west orange public schools the entirety of my upbringing and all of this is super true. far and away the coolest place i could've grown up in. so many hilarious stories from high school and i'm sure i'd have tons more had my junior and senior years not gotten ruined by covid lol
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
