School Days

A look back at more than a century of education in Pequannock Township.

BY W. JAY WANCZYK

With the first day of a new school year not far off, can you imagine what it would be like if you were starting classes in Pequannock Township 100 or 150 years ago?

Despite obvious changes such as clothing styles, facilities (schools a century ago featured multigrade classrooms) and the evolution of teaching methods, the basics of what children learn today are not too different: The three “R’s” were (and still are) a basic foundation for curricula. But where would you be attending? What would lessons be like?

Before the dawn of the 20th century and into the World War I era, Pequannock Township included not only present-day Pequannock Township, Pequannock and Pompton Plains but also Lincoln Park, Riverdale and Kinnelon. You would attend a neighborhood elementary school, but a neighborhood was much larger then—it covered an entire town! Elementary schools (grades one to eight) were located in Pompton Plains, Riverdale, Stonybrook (Kinnelon), Jacksonville/Lincoln Park and Wayne. The burgeoning manufacturing town of Butler had already split from Pequannock Township in 1898, with one contentious issue being local control of schools.

Evolving Districts

Larger jurisdictions meant the Pequannock School at that time was located in Wayne, just past the Pompton River at the intersection of Newark-Pompton Turnpike and Black Oak Ridge Road. An even earlier joint school existed on that site before 1900, and students from both Pequannock and Wayne are shown posing behind it (left), their names lost to history.

That part of Wayne was served by the Pequannock Post Office and known as the Pequannock section of Wayne. (The name of today’s Pequannock Reformed Church, located on Newark-Pompton Turnpike just south of Black Oak Ridge Road, is a remnant of that period.) While both towns’ boards of education cooperated at times with a joint school district, Pequannock Township later appears to have become a sending district until enrollment was high enough to build Pequannock School in 1924 (left) at the corners of Oak Street and Lincoln Park Road, where the Boys and Girls Club now makes its home.

After World War I, intramural and interschool athletics became more important. Regular contests were held between Pequannock School and the elementary schools of Pompton Plains, Lincoln Park, Riverdale, Pompton Lakes and Butler, often arranged by legendary educator Frank Lewis. Girls’ sports were encouraged as well.

Two-Room Schoolhouse

Pompton Plains School— once located where the Pompton Plains post office is today—was a brick two-room building erected in 1888, with additional rooms added in 1924 and 1928. An earlier wooden school had been located on the site as well.

A Well-Rounded Education

In his 20-year career with the Pequannock Township school system, Frank Lewis, first as teacher and later as supervising principal, believed that education extended beyond book learning. He helped expand students’ horizons with traditional athletics, gymnastics training and exhibitions, student Thanksgiving dinners for the town and student government (including student council-run discipline)—even in elementary school. His summertime extracurricular cross-country trips were legendary.

Lessons From the Past

An 1846 arithmetic textbook of a student who attended that earlier school illustrates how scenarios for the type of word problems that still vex math students today reflected a different world. Instead of referencing cars and planes speeding between cities, illustrations speak of travel by horseback or on foot: “An old man, who was blind, had a little dog to lead him about. ... The man took 1,980 steps in a mile, while the little dog took 3,220. How many steps …”

Serving Students for Generations

A Growing Population

An increase in the elementary school population during the later 1930s and early 1940s led the township to propose constructing Pequannock Valley Middle School (PVMS) on the site of the old Mandeville Inn, and the school opened circa 1950. Ever-increasing enrollments from the Baby boom and beyond prompted additions in the late 1950s, early 1960s and later, resulting in the school we have today.

Population growth also led to construction of North Boulevard School in the early 1950s, Hillview School in the early 1960s and “South

Boulevard School,” which was named upon dedication for Stephen J. Gerace, the school superintendent who oversaw massive expansion from the mid-1940s though the late 1960s.

Butler was the first town in the area to establish its own high school in the early 1900s, and Pequannock Township students attended there. The first graduating class from Pequannock Township High School (PTHS) graduated in 1960, with classes having begun there two years earlier. Massive additions including a wing of classrooms, an auditorium and a second gym were begun in the mid1960s, and more recent upgrades were completed in this century to meet modern standards.

In 2023, Pequannock Township’s public school system consists of five public schools: PTHS, PVMS, North Boulevard, Hillview and Stephen J. Gerace. Several private schools exist as well, including Holy Spirit School, which opened in the 1950s; the Netherlands School; and Chancellor Academy.

Like time itself, education marches on, and as today’s students and parents get ready for the 2023-24 school year, it’s worth pondering how residents a century from now will look back on what has changed—and what remains the same.