Frank R Conwell Middle School, Jersey City | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

I am in the AEP Program – the teachers are extremely nice, as well as the location and building. I am learning a lot too! But, the same positive feedback cannot be said about the students and the social environment of the school. During hallway transitions, chaos erupts in the hallways, and children are pushed around everywhere. No one follows any rules, and teachers do extremely little to enforce them. The only punishment is detention. The school, in 2016 – 17, also started new chaos with designating one stairwell for UP and one stairwell for DOWN. At the same time, they ask students to get to class on time. I ask you, how is this possible when we have to go through an extremely long roundabout to get to class? The school also has an extra stairwell where students are not allowed to go for no apparent reason. Also, the 8th grade at this school is extremely prized, and they get very special field trips. I understand why they do, but then again, I fail to comprehend how a select group of 8th graders who cause 90% of the school’s problems get to go. Moreover, in this school, you have to PAY for graduation. How does that make sense? The school is also very strict with uniform, and they give you detention if, say, you don’t wear a collar. The school has even hired someone to check people’s uniform, even though apparently they are “short on money”. Furthermore, field trips are very limited. You get one or two a year. There is also a group called joint activities. Personally, I find this infuriating – in every class, one teacher selects 4 people to go on 3 amazing field trips; a cruise, a camping trip, and a trip to the Meadowlands in New Jersey. But, the Board of Education and higher staff of MS #4 don’t care about the remaining 90% of the population who don’t get to go on the field trip. They push you to the side, basically. In addition to that, the school is highly disorganized. In the 2017-18 school year, two 7th grade AEP teachers left the school. Apparently, this caused some sort of effect that led to basically new classes without last year’s teacher’s concern. Now, there are classes consisting of more than 20 students! The organization problem is huge and real, and nothing is happening to fix it! This is an issue that has been going on with the Jersey City Public Schools District and the Board of Education for many many years. Most of all, though, what I find the worst is that this school does absolutely nothing (part of the blame also falls on the Board of Education) to fix the issues going on. The high staff are ignorant to what is going on between the students in their social environment, and only care about the academic environment. Without a proper social environment, there can be no learning in an academic environment. In addition, the AEP students at the school are treated extremely horribly and are blamed for a lot of the school’s problems. They also have programs that only damage the school, such as TTO. They have old technology damaged from horrible use, and the WiFi also sucks. Also, there have been multiple gun incidents in the school, showing how poor the security of the school is. They do little to improve security too! If the school improved its social policies and helped enforce rules better, and also gave equal opportunities to more people, I feel that the environment of the school would improve exponentially; I also feel that uniform shouldn’t be emphasized as much as it is in this school.

This school offers an accelerated enrichment program for students who have been accepted into this program. This school decides to cramp us students with Regular Ed students who have no consideration for other people and teachers whatsoever and it’s a hard environment to learn in. We AEP people are being treated horribly. As you walk the halls, you’ll see fights going on and teachers just simply tell them to stop, very LITTLE enforcement! But, there are some good things about the school like the teachers and the field trips. But I simply don’t understand how there’s only one or two field trips a year because the school is on a LOW budget. The school literally gives and schedules so many field trips in the year like roller skating. And, eighth graders, they’re the worst. The teachers look at them like they’re of higher superiority, nothing gets done to them. Not even YELLING! Overall, this school needs to have some discipline for the students.

Ms4 is a pretty good school. Some of the teachers are very nice like my Homeroom teacher. They help us learn very well and some of them are strict but can be really nice and fun. The problem is that how they maintain the school atmosphere. There is a lot of fighting in the hallways and there are very bad mannered kids all around us. They should also give more field trips and make the lunch cost cheaper because the quality of the food is bad. Not bad as a school but I expect more if people are going to advertise as an Accerated Enrichment Program. Lessons are the same things and the people who monitor aren’t doing a good job. Otherwise like I said not bad but I expect more if it’s advertised as an AEP program