Englewood Cliffs School District

I go to this school

Its ok, I guess.

We question Jennifer Brower’s judgement as a superintendent who makes decisions that affect the interest and well-being of students and do not believe she is fit for purpose. The superintendent insensibly kicked out our seven-year old child only 7 weeks prior to the end of the school year as we had to move out of the district in April.

We were told there was nothing the district could do by law. However, a document written by Education Law Center (sponsored by New Jersey State Bar Foundation) states the district has the right to do so, but “any policies relating to such admission are adopted at board discretion”. In fact, the neighboring district Englewood seems to allow a student to attend the school if he/she moves away during the last trimester.

Our daughter was forced out of North Cliff by the superintendent in May and now have to attend another school for a short period in NJ and ultimately move again to another country in June (my husband got a new job in Europe and already left by himself. I remained in NJ just to avoid disruption in my daughter's learning process as well as to enable her to complete the academic school year at North Cliff). This means our daughter has to attend 3 different schools just over a few months. This makes us think how detrimental this could ultimately be to our child’s psychology and damaging to her learning process? She already had to suffer from her father’s absence for months, and this additional forced school change only added unnecessary stress to her. This approach by North Cliffs is appalling and insensible.

Furthermore, the way Jennifer and Business Administrator Sue Anne handled the situation was extremely disappointing and not professional, in our opinion. Sue Anne was very aggressive and rude. We even felt harassed.

In summary, we PAID April tuition (they charged $1,425 just for the month of April as non-resident tuition, even though we still pay property taxes that fund the district as we still own our house). Again, Jennifer could have had better judgement on this as financially we are not putting pressure on the district. At the end, Jennifer removed our daughter in May and even though we never expressed any intention to not pay for the fees asked for the remaining seven weeks in May and June (total approx. $3,000!). The district ask the community for support (by means of fundraising, involvement, campaigns, etc). However, the opposite doesn't seem to apply and a child's wellbeing remained ignored by the district.

We must say our daughters's homeroom teacher was good. Our daughter still misses her and classmates.