Original Research by School Decision on Glen School
Glen School is a public preschool in Ridgewood, New Jersey, serving only prekindergarten students. It is one of six elementary schools in the Ridgewood Public School District, but it operates as a standalone early childhood center rather than a traditional elementary school that includes kindergarten and upper grades. Because the school serves a single grade level, many of the standard academic measures used to evaluate K-12 schools simply do not apply here. There are no state test scores because New Jersey does not administer its standardized assessments in prekindergarten, and there is no graduation rate or chronic absenteeism data for the same reason. The neighbor comparison against districts in Bergen County is also not applicable for those metrics. For a family evaluating Glen School, the relevant information lies in the school’s purpose, its community context, and the student population it serves.
The school sits in Ridgewood, an affluent suburban village in Bergen County about twenty miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan. Ridgewood is a bedroom community with a walkable downtown, tree-lined residential streets, and a well-regarded public school system that includes several elementary schools, two middle schools, and a high school. The village is largely built out, with predominantly owner-occupied single-family homes and a very low vacancy rate. As reported publicly, Ridgewood’s median household income is more than double the statewide median, and the community is family-oriented, with a substantial share of households having children. The overall desirability of the area, reflected in national rankings and continued modest population growth, means that housing values are high and competition for homes is steady. Glen School itself is located on East Glen Avenue, in a residential section of the village, and draws its prekindergarten students from the surrounding neighborhood.
The student population at Glen School is small for a school of its type. Enrollment is limited to a single cohort of prekindergarten children, which keeps the school intimate and focused entirely on early childhood education. A very small share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which aligns with the affluence of the community. The racial and ethnic composition is predominantly white and Asian, with a smaller Hispanic presence, and very few Black students or students of two or more races. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not available in the source records, so a parent who needs information on special education services or multilingual support would want to contact the school or district directly.
Because Glen School is a prekindergarten-only program, it does not offer the academic pathways that characterize later grades, such as Advanced Placement courses, career and technical education, or dual-credit options. The school’s focus is on early learning and school readiness, within the framework of a regular public school. It is not a charter school or a magnet school, and its Title I status was not reported, which likely reflects the fact that the school’s very low poverty rate would not trigger federal Title I funding. Discipline data, staffing ratios, attendance figures, and course access information were also absent from the available records; these are metrics that typically apply to grade spans where students are older and where state reporting requirements are more extensive.
The Ridgewood Public School District, which oversees Glen School, did not have any parent-relevant changes reported in the four-year window that would materially affect a family’s decision. The district runs a well-established system with ten schools and a long track record in the community.
A family considering Glen School will be looking at a prekindergarten program in a high-resource community. The school’s small size, affluent peer environment, and location in a village with strong civic amenities—a public library, parks, a train station, and a walkable downtown—are the defining features. The lack of testing data and other academic metrics is not a weakness; it is a function of the grade band. The question for a parent is whether this particular public prekindergarten fits their logistical needs and early childhood priorities, and for that, a visit to the school and conversation with the district about the program’s curriculum, schedule, and enrollment criteria would be the natural next step.
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