Dwight Morrow High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school located in Englewood, in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as part of the Englewood Public School District. The school also serves students from Englewood Cliffs, who attend as part of a sending/receiving relationship.Dwight Morrow High School/Academies at Englewood 2015 Report Card Narrative, New Jersey Department of Education. Accessed June 6, 2016. "Dwight Morrow High School is a community of learners and teachers consisting of approximately 1055 students and 125 faculty members. Our school serves Englewood and Englewood Cliffs, and our campus is the home of the largest Interdistrict Public School Choice program in New Jersey, the Academies at Englewood." Dwight Morrow high school shares its campus with the Academies at Englewood.
As of the 2024–25 school year, the school had an enrollment of 1,083 students and 81.6 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 13.3:1. There were 631 students (58.3% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 94 (8.7% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.School data for Dwight Morrow High School/Academies@Englewood, National Center for Education Statistics. Accessed January 15, 2026.
The Academies at Englewood is a four-year magnet high school established in 2002 that serves students in the ninth through twelfth grades from across Bergen County and shares the campus with Dwight Morrow."AE school profile" The program was started by John Grieco (founder of the Bergen County Academies) who was brought in as district superintendent in an effort to diversify the student body at Dwight Morrow High School by attracting "more white and Asian students to the high school" from outside the Englewood community to an academically challenging, high-performing magnet program that was modeled after his Bergen County Academies, with students being admitted on a competitive basis and half coming from outside of the city.Newman, Maria. "Education; Reasons for Hope in Englewood", The New York Times, February 3, 2002. Accessed February 2, 2024. "In addition, there is a new interim superintendent, Dr. John Grieco, who is well respected in the county and who is bringing new ideas to the district. Most significantly, Dr. Grieco has drawn up a plan to start a rigorous academy with competitive admissions at the Dwight Morrow High School to try to attract the children of wealthy families who have fled to the private schools.... With Dr. Grieco's help, the Englewood district plans to open the Academies @ Englewood in September, a competitive school that will be situated on the Dwight Morris campus and that will focus on finance, pre-engineering, law and public safety and information technology. The first year, the school will accept 104 ninth-grade students, with half from Englewood and half from the surrounding communities.... The hope is to attract more white and Asian students to the high school, which is currently 97 percent black and Hispanic, and is at the center of a protracted and expensive court fight with neighboring Englewood Cliffs."
History Located on a park-like campus and constructed at a cost of $750,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) 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.Staff. "School Dedicated to Morrow Ready; $750,000 Englewood Building Will Open This Month in a 37-Acre Park. Will Accommodate 1,200 Students; Provided $1,300 Fund to Decorate Halls for Study of English and Latin.", The New York Times, January 1, 1933. Accessed December 22, 2016. "The new $750,000 Dwight Morrow High School here, named in memory of the late United States Senator from New Jersey, who with Mrs. Morrow established his home in Englewood, will be opened to classes in January."
The school is named after Dwight Morrow, a businessman, politician, and diplomat who lived in the city. The school shares its campus with the Academies at 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.
The school had been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools from 1928Dwight Morrow High School , Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools. Accessed June 12, 2011. until 2012, when the school's accreditation status was removed.Spring 2012 Accreditation Actions , The Standard; A Newsletter from the Middle States Association Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools, Spring 2012. Accessed November 11, 2020. "Removal of Accreditation... Dwight Morrow High School, Englewood, NJ"
Demographic issues During the 1980s, the school's racial and ethnic makeup saw significant changes; school enrollment was 36% white in the late 1970s, many of them students from Englewood Cliffs, but the number of white students declined significantly during the 1980s, leaving a student body that was 92% African American or Hispanic by 1995.Wells, Any Stuart. Both Sides Now: The Story of School Desegregation’s Graduates, University of California Press, 2009. Accessed February 7, 2024. "In ninth grade he and his classmates were joined by more well-to-do white students who came down the hill from a nearby K-8 school system in Englewood Cliffs to attend Englewood’s Dwight Morrow High School. By the late 1970s, Dwight Morrow High was 57 percent black, 36 percent white, and 7 percent Hispanic.... Fewer white students enrolled each year, until, by the 1990s, there were virtually none."Stewart, Barbara. "School Colors", The New York Times, June 11, 1995. Accessed February 7, 2024. "At issue is a high school that is 92 percent black and Hispanic -- Dwight Morrow, in Englewood -- surrounded by largely white ones. Courts have ordered the State Board of Education to end the racial imbalance, now and forever." Levels of violence grew at the school and academic performance declined; "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."Tergesen, Anne E. "School denies it's a hotbed of danger", The Record, October 22, 1993, sec. B, p. 1. Accessed February 7, 2024, via Newspapers.com
The Englewood Cliffs Public Schools cited poor performance at Dwight Morrow as justification for its efforts to end the sending / receiving relationship with Englewood that had existed since 1965 and began sending students from Englewood Cliffs to Tenafly High School, a high-performing school whose student body was predominantly white.Schmidt, Peter. "N.J. Schools Debate Forced Merger To Achieve Integration", Education Week, January 8, 1992. Accessed February 7, 2024. "Englewood’s student population is more than 85 percent black or Latino, while Englewood Cliffs and Tenafly are more than 95 percent white or Asian. Englewood Cliffs has no high school. Since 1965, it has had an agreement with Englewood under which its students attend Englewood’s Dwight Morrow High School.... The students in the two districts perform differently as well, with the standardized test scores of Tenafly High School students consistently higher than those of Dwight Morrow students and among the best in the state."van Tassel, Priscilla. "School Ruling Challenged", The New York Times, May 15, 1988. Accessed February 7, 2024. This led to a protracted court battle between Englewood and Englewood Cliffs beginning in 1985, a move characterized by Englewood residents as racist.Garcia, Dan. "Opponents call lawsuit racist", The Record, March 24, 1987. Accessed February 7, 2024, via Newspapers.com. "Gathered in Ann Sparanese's Englewood home, about a dozen white parents and two black parents rendered their own verdicts in the litigation involving Englewood Cliffs, Englewood, and Tenafly: The lawsuit is elitist, racist, and reflects a deepening chasm between blacks and whites and between rich and poor, not only in Englewood, but elsewhere. 'The people in Englewood Cliffs want to create something like the all-white academies that sprang up in the South during the Civil Rights movement, and they want the state's stamp of approval for their racist action,' said Bob Guild, a Manhattan travel agent."Pristin, Terry. "New Jersey Daily Briefing Desegregation Plan Is Opposed", The New York Times, October 11, 1995. Accessed February 7, 2024. "The hearing was the third of five held by the State Education Department to consider the regionalization, which is meant to address racial imbalance at Dwight Morrow. Ethan Addes, an Englewood Cliffs School Board member opposed to the plan, drew loud applause when he said: 'I have been called a racist. And the only way I can prove that I am not a racist is by sacrificing my children's safety and education. The price is too high. I will not pay."'" 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.
The Academies magnet program was opened up in an attempt to attract "white and Asian students back into Englewood's schools". The opening of the new academy led to a perception by Englewood's African American community that the academy and its diverse student body was given its own portion of the campus to operate on with highly qualified teachers and more resources, while the "overwhelmingly black and Hispanic" regular high school, Dwight Morrow, continued to operate separately on the campus with overcrowded classrooms and an inferior education. Dwight Morrow students walked out and staged a rally in September 2005 to protest against the conditions at the school: "The books are old and the classes are overcrowded,' said..., a junior. "In my history class at least five students have to stand up each day."Feibel, Carolyn. "Englewood students stage walkout over chaotic conditions", The Record, September 23, 2005. Accessed February 2, 2024, via Newspapers.com. "More than 200 students from Dwight Morrow High School picketed Thursday to protest crowded classrooms, disorganized schedules and chaos caused by construction delays. The underlying theme, however, was the perceived inequity that exists between students at Dwight Morrow and those enrolled in AcademiesEnglewood, the magnet program created to bring racial balance to the district. The Academies are racially diverse, but Dwight Morrow remains overwhelmingly black and Hispanic.... The gulf between the AcademiesEnglewood and the traditional Dwight Morrow school was much in evidence at Thursday's rally. The goal of the college-oriented Academies, which opened in 2002, is to raise academic standards while luring white and Asian students back into Englewood's schools."