Frederic A. Priff Elementary School, Waretown NJ

Original Research by School Decision on Frederic A. Priff Elementary School

Frederic A. Priff Elementary is a regular public school in Waretown, New Jersey, serving grades three through six as part of the Ocean Township School District. The school sits in a small unincorporated Jersey Shore community that has been gradually losing population in recent decades and has become a destination for retirees, with developments such as Skippers Cove and Pebble Beach. The area’s main commercial strip is Route 9, and the Garden State Parkway provides regional access. Civic anchors include a public library branch and Albert Music Hall. The housing market in the zip code shows home values roughly in line with the statewide benchmark and rents that are high relative to the national average, reflecting the broader coastal real estate pressures of Ocean County.

Academically, Priff Elementary’s performance on the New Jersey Student Learning Assessments places the school below the midpoint for overall proficiency when compared with districts across Ocean County. In math, the share of students scoring proficient or above ranges from just over a quarter in grade three to about two-fifths in grade four, with grade five and grade six landing in between. English language arts results are somewhat stronger, crossing the half-proficient mark for grade four and hovering in the low-to-mid forties in the remaining grades. Science, tested only in grade five, shows about a quarter of students reaching proficiency. These figures indicate room for improvement across core subjects, and a parent may want to ask the school how it supports students who are not yet meeting benchmarks and what targeted interventions look like.

The student body is predominantly white, with a noticeable Hispanic minority and very small shares of Black and Asian students. Just over two-fifths of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker that places the school in a middle range for economic need. Enrollment is small and evenly spread across the four grade levels. Federal civil rights data on discipline, staffing, and chronic absenteeism are not available in this profile, so those dimensions of school climate cannot be assessed here.

The district context adds a layer of fiscal constraint. Ocean Township School District has been experiencing a sustained decline in state aid under New Jersey’s S2 funding formula, which the district has offset through increases to the local property tax levy and budget reductions. A notable factor is that the district sends its seventh- and twelfth-grade students to the Southern Regional School District on a tuition basis, and that cost consumes a substantial share of the budget. At the same time, district enrollment has been growing in the early grades, with kindergarten and pre-kindergarten numbers rising steadily over the past few years. That growth creates pressure on classroom space and staffing even as the district works with a tighter budget. For a family considering Priff Elementary, the combination of gradually rising enrollment in the lower grades, the tuition arrangement for older students, and the ongoing state aid reductions may affect class sizes and program breadth over time. The school itself is the only elementary building in the district and feeds into the regional middle and high schools, so the academic experience here is a self-contained upper-elementary chapter before a transition to a much larger school setting.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 327%

School 27% · District 27%

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 15 pts below county median

Grade 441%

School 41% · District 41%

▼ 5 pts below state median · even with county median

Grade 532%

School 32% · District 32%

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 6 pts below county median

Grade 638%

School 38% · District 38%

▲ 5 pts above state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 339%

School 39% · District 39%

▼ 6 pts below state median · ▲ 1 pts above county median

Grade 451%

School 51% · District 51%

▼ 4 pts below state median · ▲ 5 pts above county median

Grade 543%

School 43% · District 43%

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Grade 643%

School 43% · District 43%

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Science

Grade 524%

School 24% · District 24%

▼ 4 pts below state median · even with county median

This schoolOcean Township School District, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income30%Higher-income48%19 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income37%Higher-income62%25 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income33%Higher-income57%23 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income25%Higher-income54%29 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income26%Higher-income28%2 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income26%Higher-income53%27 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income21%Higher-income50%29 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income21%Higher-income48%27 pp gap