Is Red Bank a good place to visit, questionable place to rase a family? (Camden: home)

[Matthew in Jersey]

Red Bank schools get criticized here a lot. People seem to like going to the town for a night out, and then leaving/returning to their "better" hometown.

How accurate is that (the perception of the town)?

People recommend surrounding towns, but I prefer some diversity (socio-economic, ethnic) for my children.

But at the same time, I don't want to lose $$$ over time if we buy a home there.

Is Red Bank similar to Freehold Borough, in terms of changing demographics?

[ImCurlybelle]

I don't know much about the schools, however, Red Bank is beautiful. And, it's very trendy with lots of restaurants, boutiques, artsy things to do - it has something for everyone ... LOVE it. But, it's VERY expensive. My friend's relative lives in Freehold, and sends her kids to private school -

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by Matthew in Jersey

Red Bank schools get criticized here a lot. People seem to like going to the town for a night out, and then leaving/returning to their "better" hometown.

How accurate is that (the perception of the town)?

People recommend surrounding towns, but I prefer some diversity (socio-economic, ethnic) for my children.

But at the same time, I don't want to lose $$$ over time if we buy a home there.

Is Red Bank similar to Freehold Borough, in terms of changing demographics?

I live in the area, although my daughter was no longer school age when I moved down here. I have never heard that Red Bank schools are supposed to be bad.

It's the kind of town where there are some very expensive areas and there is a poorer area on the one end, with a lot of Mexican immigrants and probably some people in between. (I sometimes volunteer at Lunch Break, a soup kitchen/food pantry place that provides other services like clothing, toys, etc., on that end of town. It's not so terrible there that you'd be afraid to drive through or anything, though! Perhaps schools with non-white children are being referred to as bad? I don't know, just putting that out there. I have an African-American coworker who lives in Red Bank with his wife and five kids. He's not poor though--he has a pretty good job in the finance area, so he would be sort of middle class.

[drive carephilly]

This is funny to me since I grew up in the Red Bank area from the early 80's . . .back when the west side of Red Bank was actually bad and when half the downtown storefronts were vacant . . . I moved away in the early 90's, moved back in the late 90s, left a few years later and still go back to visit family a few times a year.

I have cousins who went to RBR (went to Shrewsbury for K-8), friends who went to Red Bank public schools K-12 and they all got a great education, went on to college and turned out to be successful adults. I'd go so far as to say that my cousins who went to RBR are far more well-rounded as adults than my cousins who went to RBC.

Red Bank is far better now than it was 15 years ago and even back then the worst anyone could say about RBR was that it was mediocre. Put it this way . . . if you're into the whole school ranking thing, the HSPA scores for the top 16 schools in the state are all at the max of 200. Last year's score for my alma mater, Shore Regional (ranked 108 in the state) is 182.5. Red Bank Regional is ranked 135 and comes in at 179 on the tests.

Woodrow Wilson in Camden, ranked as the worst in the state (381) comes in with a score of 47.8

I realize i'm talking about high schools here but the point remains the same, there's really not much difference between a school ranked at 1 and a school at 50. "Bad" in this context is just hyperbole.

[brokenaperture]

I'd prefer 100% to live IN Red Bank. My girlfriend went to RBR and it's not by any stretch a "bad" or even mediocre school.