A brief history of Glen Rock
The borough has been one of the state's highest-income communities. Based on data from the American Community Survey for 2013-2017, Glen Rock residents had a median household income of $162,443, ranked 6th in the state among municipalities with more than 10,000 residents, more than double the statewide median of $76,475.
Glen Rock was voted one of the best places to live in New Jersey for its low crime rate, good schools, close proximity to New York City and its high property values, including in 2018, when Niche ranked it the 19th best place to live in New Jersey. Glen Rock was formed on September 14, 1894, from portions of Ridgewood Township and Saddle River Township during the "Boroughitis" phenomenon then sweeping through Bergen County, in which 26 boroughs were formed in the county in 1894 alone.The main impetus for the break from Ridgewood Township was the decision to have Glen Rock students attend a new school closer to the center of Ridgewood instead of their one-room schoolhouse located at the intersection of Ackerman Avenue and Rock Road. Originally, the borough was to be named "South Ridgewood", but in order to prevent confusion with the neighboring Ridgewood Village, resident Monsieur Viel suggested the alternative name of Glen Rock.
The boulder in Glen Rock
Glen Rock was settled around a large boulder in a small valley (glen), from which it gets its name. The boulder, a glacial erratic weighing in at 570 short tons (520 t) and located where Doremus Avenue meets Rock Road, is believed to have been carried to the site by a glacier that picked up the rock 15,000 years ago near Peekskill, New York and carried it for 20 miles (32 km) to its present location. The Lenape Native Americans called the boulder "Pamachapuka" (meaning "stone from heaven" or "stone from the sky") and used it for signal fires and as a trail marker.
The borough was the site of one of Bergen County's most serious public transportation accidents. In 1911, a trolley operator for the North Jersey Rapid Transit Company, one day away from retirement, died in a crash with an opposing trolley around the intersection of Prospect and Grove Streets that was caused by signal problems. In addition to the death of the opposing trolley operator, 12 people were injured. This crash in part hastened the demise of this transportation mode which ran from Elmwood Park, New Jersey to Suffern, New York and competed with the Erie Railroad. The right of way for this trolley line was purchased by the Public Service Enterprise Group and is still visible today
The Glen Rock Public Schools serve students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. As of the 2017-18 school year, the district and its six schools had an enrollment of 2,554 students and 212.3 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 12.0:1. Schools in the district (with 2017-18 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics are Richard E. Byrd School (269 students; in grades K-5), Central Elementary School (333; K-5), Clara E. Coleman School (307; K-5), Alexander Hamilton Elementary School (267; K-5), Glen Rock Middle School for grades 6-8 (578) and Glen Rock High School for grades 9-12 (756). The high school underwent a $45.3 million renovation project that started in 2009 and was completed for the 2011-12 school year, which included a new science wing, a creative arts department and system updates.The district's high school was one of 18 schools statewide (and three public high schools) honored in 2018 by the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program by the United States Department of Education.
Public school students from the borough, and all of Bergen County, are eligible to attend the secondary education programs offered by the Bergen County Technical Schools, which include the Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, and the Bergen Tech campus in Teterboro or Paramus. The district offers programs on a shared-time or full-time basis, with admission based on a selective application process and tuition covered by the student's home school district.
Academy of Our Lady is a Catholic school for students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade that is affiliated with St. Catharine's Roman Catholic Church located in Glen Rock and Our Lady of Mount Carmel in neighboring Ridgewood, and is operated under the supervision of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark. In September 2013, the school was one of 15 schools in New Jersey to be recognized by the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program, which Education Secretary Arne Duncan described as schools that "represent examples of educational excellence
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2017 US Census Bureau, American Community Survey. Home value data includes all types of owner-occupied housing.