New Providence Middle School

I have had 2 kids go through this school. Every teacher has been excellent. However, our experience with the school was generally poor. Class sizes are large (ie 24 kids in a single teacher taught Kindergarten class, even more in later grades), and appear to be much larger than neighboring districts. Every year, my kids had multiple seriously disruptive kids in their class. Sometimes the kids had a shared aide who tried to handle them, sometimes they didn't and the single teacher was left to handle the chaos, which often resulted in the teacher focusing on disciplining the misbehaving kids instead of actually teaching the class. My kids would regale me nightly with tales of their outrageously behaved classmates, who apparently have just as much of a right to be in class disrupting the class as my kids have a right to learn. I would have appreciated smaller class sizes and a more robust special ed program to deal with kids with major behavioral issues.

During the kindergarten year, we met some great teachers, but things changed drastically when we encountered one teacher who created an extremely stressful class environment.

Our daughter is a junior and has been attending Oak Knoll since 4th grade and we couldn't have been happier with the decision we made. She is flourishing in academics, athletics, and her friends (and their families) are really great people. My daughter has been exposed to volunteering opportunities which exposed her to the joy of giving back to others. Jen Landis, the Head of Schools, is a role model for the girls in the Upper School. We couldn't be happier with the experience - both ours and our daughter's. Oak Knoll carefully curates each student's experience to be purposeful and learn through doing.