Dwight Morrow High School

History

Located on a 37-acre (15 ha) park-like campus and constructed at a cost of $750,000 from a design by architect Lawrence C. Licht, the school was opened to students in January 1933 with a capacity of 1,200 students, helping to ease overcrowding at the existing high school and junior high facilities.

The school is named after Dwight Morrow, a businessman, politician, and diplomat who lived in the city; Morrow was also the father-in-law of aviator Charles Lindbergh. The school shares its campus with the Academies@Englewood and Janis E. Dismus Middle School. Dwight Morrow and the Academies at Englewood are located east of Miller's Pond and share the same administration. Janis E. Dismus Middle School, formerly Englewood Middle School, is located south of Miller's Pond and operates independently.

Demographic issues

During the 1980s, changes in local demographics drastically altered the school's ethnic body resulting in an African American majority. The nearby district of Englewood Cliffs attempted to end its sending receiving relationship with Englewood due to the poor performance of the school. This led to a bitter court battle between Englewood and Englewood Cliffs beginning in 1985, a move characterized by Englewood as racist. By 1992, the school was 97% African American and Hispanic. "There were more violent incidents reported at DMHS (Dwight Morrow High School) than any other school in Bergen County in the 1991–92 school year, and test scores remained painfully low." Court battles continued, in an attempt to desegregate the high school.

According to Assemblyman John E. Rooney, "white students from Englewood Cliffs, the district trying to end its obligation to send its students to Dwight Morrow, feared for their safety at the heavily minority institution." Most Englewood Cliffs parents have chosen private school over Dwight Morrow High School.

In Fall 2002, a new magnet program was opened up in an attempt to attract non- African American students back to the school. The opening of the new academy led to more discrimination from the viewpoint of Englewood's African American community. The academy was given a portion of the campus to operate on, and the regular high school, Dwight Morrow, continued to operate on the remainder of the campus. The academy has a diverse population and is kept separate from Dwight Morrow while occupying the same campus. This has created two distinct schools on one campus. Dwight Morrow has recently had protests, overcrowded classrooms and an inferior education.

The academy has highly qualified teachers as well as better resources.

Dwight Morrow high school continues to have major problems and continues to be 97% black and Hispanic. If the Academies @ Englewood are included as part of the High School's total population, that percentage is considerably lower.

Many residents of Englewood feel that the City of Englewood has worked against the progress of the high school by opening up the Academies. About 50% of the students are from Englewood. Englewood's African American community feels the city and the board of education has put its minority residents second with this move.

Awards, recognition and rankings

The school was the 190th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 339 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2014 cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", using a new ranking methodology. The school had been ranked 133rd in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 128th in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 180th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which surveyed 316 schools across the state.

Academic programs

The Academies@Englewood also known as A@E or Academies @ Englewood is a four-year comprehensive magnet public high school program started by Dr. John Grieco (founder of the Bergen County Academies) in an effort to diversify the Dwight Morrow High School campus, to raise the standard of public education for Englewood residents, and to attract white residents of Englewood and Englewood Cliffs back to the public school system. The school was created at a time when Englewood and Englewood Cliffs population was about 42% and 67% white, respectively, while the Dwight Morrow was some 99.9% African-American and Hispanic. As established, the school would accept 75 students from Englewood and Englewood Cliffs, and 75 students from out of the district in each grade, for a total enrollment of 600 students.

The school was established in 2002 with four academies: Finance, Information Systems, Law and Public Safety, and Pre-Engineering. A fifth academy, Biomedicine, was added in 2004. The school graduated its first class in 2006, with 91 students, about half of whom were from Englewood, the other half from other North Jersey communities.

The school participates in the Interdistrict Public School Choice Program, having been approved on November 2, 1999, as one of the first ten districts statewide to participate in the program. Seats in the program for non-resident students are specified by the district and are allocated by lottery, with tuition paid for participating students by the New Jersey Department of Education. The school's participation in the program has drawn students from over 40 Bergen County, Hudson County and Passaic County towns.

As of the 2007–08 school year, the school requires students to declare a major that will guide their course selection throughout their four years at the school.

Controversy

The primary controversy with the Academies is its location on the Dwight Morrow High School campus. The South building was taken away from Dwight Morrow High in 2002 to establish the Academies and the two schools also share a single auditorium and gymnasium. This left Dwight Morrow High with only the North Building and fewer available classrooms. Residents in the City of Englewood have expressed feelings of anger in allowing the Academies to operate on the campus; newspapers such as The Record have quoted residents accusing the Academies of being a racist institution, regardless of the fact that there are many African American and Hispanic students attending the Academies@Englewood, which was created to reintegrate Dwight Morrow, a school that was subject to years of white flight.

The Englewood Board of Education has repeatedly attempted in various ways to integrate the two schools, but that task has been proven difficult due to many issues. The original idea in bringing the Academies to Dwight Morrow High School campus was to diversify the student body of Dwight Morrow while setting a higher standing for education in the entire district. The campus itself has been diversified, but the two schools are kept almost completely separate. Until recently, the schools only shared classes such as electives, music, art, and physical education, but from the school year of 2006-2007, they have operated on the same day schedule, helping many students share core classes. If the Academies@Englewood are not included as a part of the Dwight Morrow High School student body, the school still remains overwhelmingly minority, about 98% Black and Hispanic.

A 2005 report by the New Jersey Department of Education documented the continuing segregation between the Academies and Dwight Morrow, with African-American and Latino enrollment in the Academies declining each year, despite the stated goal of achieving greater minority balance.

Plans

The Englewood Board of Education has plans to integrate the Academies @ Englewood with Dwight Morrow High School. The plan to phase the two schools into one will take place over the next few years. The integration of Dwight Morrow with the Academies has caused much controversy.

Athletics

The Dwight Morrow High School Maroon Raiders compete in the Big North Conference, following a reorganization of sports leagues in Northern New Jersey by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA). With 826 students in grades 10-12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA for the 2015-16 school year as North I, Group III for most athletic competition purposes, which included schools with an enrollment of 786 to 1,074 students in that grade range. The school had previously participated in the BCSL American athletic conference of the Bergen County Scholastic League.

The track team won the Group III indoor relay championships in 1970 and 1971.

The boys basketball team won the 2008 North I, Group II state sectional title, defeating Pascack Hills High School 72–65 in the tournament final. The win marked the team's first sectional title since 2005, ending a two-year run by Pascack Hills.

Administration

Core members of the Dwight Morrow administration are:

Graduated

Attended

Architecture

Dwight Morrow High School has two buildings. One building is called the North building and was the original structure of the school. Later on the Academies at Englewood, also known as the South building, was added to the campus in 2001. The High School's North building was built using Gothic architecture. The North building features a 100-foot tower.

Millers Pond on the campus coupled with the Janis E. Dismus Middle School on the grounds lends a collegiate atmosphere to the school.

Popular culture

The school's auditorium is named after famed jazz musician and long-time Englewood resident, Dizzy Gillespie.