If you are looking at Demarest, someone has already told you about the schools. A friend, a forum, probably an agent. What nobody tends to explain is how the schools are actually organized here — and it is unusual enough that it changes how living in this town feels day to day.
Three buildings, three narrow grade bands
Demarest runs its own PreK–8 district for a town of two square miles, and it splits about 800 children across three separate schools:
- County Road School — PreK through 1st grade. Roughly 221 students, about 12 per teacher.
- Luther Lee Emerson School — grades 2 through 4. Roughly 221 students, 10 per teacher. Ranked 62nd of 1,347 New Jersey elementary schools, up 41 places in a single year.
- Demarest Middle School — grades 5 through 8. Roughly 359 students, 10 per teacher. Ranked 23rd of 752 New Jersey middle schools.
Taken together, the district sits 17th of 609 in New Jersey, ahead of about 97% of districts in the state.
What that structure actually feels like
Two things follow from it, and only one of them shows up in rankings.
The good part is scale. A hundred-odd kids per grade means teachers know your child by name and so do the other parents. Nobody disappears in a building that size.
The part families do not anticipate is that your child changes schools twice before middle school even starts. Some kids take that in stride. Some find it genuinely disruptive, and I have had buyers with an anxious seven-year-old decide the transitions were not worth it. Worth thinking about honestly rather than after you close.
The other small reality: all three schools let out within the same window, in a town with two main roads. County Road and Hardenburgh Avenue backs up in the afternoon. It is a five-minute annoyance, not a dealbreaker, but it is the kind of thing you only hear from someone who has sat in it.
The high school is the real headline — with a caveat
From ninth grade, students attend Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest on Knickerbocker Road: about 1,038 students, roughly 11 per teacher, and 18th of 434 public high schools in New Jersey. Closter and Haworth send their students to the same building.
Here is the caveat worth understanding before you pay a premium for it. Niche currently ranks the Northern Valley Regional High School District #1 of 243 school districts in New Jersey. That is a real and impressive number. But that district is a high-school-only district covering grades nine through twelve for seven towns — Demarest, Closter and Haworth at the Demarest campus, and Harrington Park, Northvale, Norwood and Old Tappan at the Old Tappan campus.
So when someone tells you Demarest is in the number one district in New Jersey, that is accurate. What they leave out is that six other towns are in it too, several of them at lower price points. If the high school is your reason for buying, you have more options than you were told.
The academy in town that nobody mentions
The Bergen County Institute for Science and Technology, one of the county academies, physically sits in Demarest on Knickerbocker Road. It ranks 13th of 434 New Jersey high schools with about 290 students.
Living in Demarest does not get your child a seat — admission is county-wide and competitive. But if your child earns one, the difference between a five-minute drive and a forty-minute one across Bergen County is not nothing.
What all of this does to home prices
School demand in a two-square-mile borough with almost no rental inventory produces exactly what you would expect. Homeownership in Demarest runs about 94.3%. Census estimates put the median property value at $1.11M as of 2024, up 15.5% in a year, with a median household income of $208,036.
Read that value figure carefully. It is an estimate across every home in town, including houses the same family has owned since the 1970s. Actual closings run higher, particularly for renovated and newer construction, and the gap between the two is where sellers lose money by trusting a portal estimate. If you want a real number, start with a valuation and I will send you the comparable sales behind it.
Why this matters if you are buying
If schools are genuinely your first priority, your comparison set is not "Demarest versus the suburbs." It is narrower and more useful than that, and it is why the Demarest town guide spends as much time on the neighbours as it does on Demarest itself.
Start with Closter and Haworth, which feed the same high school building. Then look at Harrington Park, Northvale, Norwood and Old Tappan, which sit in the same regional district at the other campus. Then consider Cresskill, which runs its own district straight through twelfth grade and is a genuinely different model.
That is four or five real options instead of one, and the price spread across them is significant. Narrowing it properly is most of the value I add.
Demarest school FAQs
Is Demarest in the #1 school district in New Jersey?
Demarest is one of seven towns in the Northern Valley Regional High School District, which Niche ranks #1 of 243 New Jersey districts. That district covers grades 9–12 only. Demarest’s own PreK–8 district is ranked 17th of 609 in the state.
How many schools does Demarest have?
Three public schools for PreK through 8th grade: County Road School (PreK–1), Luther Lee Emerson School (grades 2–4) and Demarest Middle School (grades 5–8), with about 801 students in total.
What high school do Demarest students attend?
Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest, on Knickerbocker Road, shared with students from Closter and Haworth.
Do you have to live in Demarest to attend the Bergen County academy located there?
No. The Bergen County Institute for Science and Technology admits students from across Bergen County through a competitive process, so a Demarest address does not guarantee a place.
Is Demarest a good town for families?
Niche ranks it #22 of 414 New Jersey suburbs for raising a family and #25 of 637 places statewide. About four in ten households have a child under 18, and the median age is 46, so it skews toward established families rather than first-time buyers.
Thinking it through?
I live one town over in Norwood and sell across the Northern Valley, so I can tell you how these towns actually compare once you are standing in the houses rather than reading the rankings. Read the full Demarest neighborhood guide, browse every town I cover in my Bergen County guide, or send me a note. You can also reach me at 201-310-6560.
