Valley Middle School

Valley Middle School is one of the compact middle schools in OAKLAND, New Jersey, operated by Oakland Public School District, with 446 students on its rolls from grades 6 through 8. Enrollment runs roughly 23% below the state mean of about 578.

Within Oakland Public School District, which oversees 5 schools and 1,300 students, Valley Middle School is one campus in the system.

On demographics, Valley Middle School reports that the student body is overwhelmingly White (80%). Beyond that, the school reports 11% Hispanic, 5% Asian, 3% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 55% White, putting the school's mix meaningfully more White than the area baseline.

On the resource side, The school employs 47 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 9.4:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 10.9:1, putting Valley Middle School tighter than the state norm the norm. About 9% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. That share is south of Bergen County's rate of about 28%.

With demographic context factored in, Valley Middle School sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 61.5%; this one delivers 63.9%.

Zooming out to the county, Bergen County reports that median household income runs about $124,884, about 53% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 5%. In all, Bergen County runs 291 public schools (combined enrollment of about 133,883 students), of which Valley Middle School is one.

Nearest neighbor: Dogwood Hill Elementary School, around 0.4 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Valley Middle School comes 4th of 8 in the immediate cluster, ahead of the nearby-schools average of 61.3%.

Valley Middle School operates from a bedroom-community location.

Trend over the last 7 years. Valley Middle School's enrollment has contracted 20% since 2018, when it stood at 556 (now 446). The Hispanic share of enrollment expanded from 6% to 11% over that span. Class-load math has fell: from 10.6:1 in 2018 to 9.4:1 in 2025.

On this page, members of the Valley Middle School community share and discuss sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.