When visiting Kent, I have stayed at the Fife n Drum. Or I rent a house in the area.
@Hopeful0304 , we live within a reasonable drive so I don’t have much experience with local hotels. I’ve stayed at the Fife and Drum for reunions. It’s been a while so maybe they’ve made some changes but I’d call it more serviceable than nice. The restaurant has been there forever and is a staple.
Choate seems to have an up and down relationship with the town of Wallingford. Town Council and residents have opposed two major initiatives - the purchase and closing of Old Durham Road leading to the Kohler Center, and the closing of Beaumont Ave. as part of the school admin’s desire to build the new auditorium at the St. John Hall location. This forced the school to build the new Colony auditorium at the NE edge of campus, which was its less preferable location. Even traffic calming initiatives have been challenging.
^ I heard from Choate students that Wallingford residents don’t love them—hesitant to stop when the students cross the road, just sort of give them the cold shoulder.
I can chime in here about Lawrenceville. As you probably already know, Lville has about a 1/3 of students who are day students and the rest are boarders. The day students live in nearby towns.
Lawrenceville is part of Lawrence Township, and has its own zip code. The ‘downtown’ area of Lawrenceville is right across the street from the school, and has a few restaurants, post office, bakery, ice cream shop, etc. You can walk from one end of the ‘downtown’ to the other in about 10 minutes. Lawrence Township, on the other hand, is quite expansive, and is a suburban area located south of Princeton and North of Trenton. Bounded by the east is the Rt 1 corridor. So there are lots of people who live in the area.
The Lawrenceville School does have a bubble effect. Apart from the walk across the street to TJ’s Pizza, just about everything else happens on campus. The students do have interaction with the locals, but its minimal. I would say the relationship is cordial. There are a few restaurants across the street that accept the Big Red card for payment.
We live in Exeter. Honestly, one of the reasons I was hesitant to move here in the first place was because I was concerned about a townie versus PEA kids vibe. (At the time, we were planning on sending our kids to public schools.) We ended up moving here anyway, and I’m happy to report that I’ve not witnessed anything like that at all. I think that’s for several reasons. First, many families who live in Exeter are linked in some way to PEA, so it definitely doesn’t feels like an us/them thing. Some of these kids end up at PEA; others do not. But the connections remain regardless and certainly nearly everyone who lives in town knows someone who goes there. Also, the school does admit a good number of local kids, and that helps with goodwill. Furthermore, the local high school is also very good, and has allures of its own – so it’s not like every kid who goes to public school is pining to be at PEA. Also, PEA does a huge amount of outreach with the public elementary schools, so that’s a positive and happy connection. Lastly, when we have crossed paths with Exeter kids, I’ve seen none of the stereotypical attitudes or behaviors associated with prep school. They all seem very “normal” (for lack of a better word). Not to mention that they generate business, add diversity, and help give a “bustling” feel to the town.
I just heard from one of my friends who live in Windsor that the town doesn’t have a very good relationship with Loomis. Though I do feel like Loomis takes a lot of local people, people still dislike Loomis kids. Would love to hear more info or any input on this.
@sparkatzz, I read in the lclog that loomis recently got into a huge fight with one of their neighboring landowners cause they were apparently using their land as a shooting range and people would hear gunshots go off in the middle of the day. Anyway, LC ended up buying the land from them for 150k when they were originally asking close to 1mil, there was a bunch of city meetings about it too so I’m assuming thats why they have recently had an extra rocky relationship with Windsor.
As a day student from Andover, I think I can speak about the town culture. The town cooperates with PA very well and we have some events where we work with Andover High School such as the INSLE Madrid trip and the suicide prevention walk we just had today.
Many students from Andover Public Schools apply here so there is actually an application protocol that the town middle schools follow when applying here.
The only thing that isn’t that great is the fact that Andover students are sometimes called “cat boners” from local high school students driving by the school. However, I haven’t heard much of this lately so things are pretty chill.