From A Hoboken Boyhood To Short Hills Schools: Ex-Principal Tells All

HOBOKEN, NJ — What's it like to grow up in an a poor city and then end up running a school in a prestigious New Jersey district with some very demanding parents?

Former Millburn Middle School Principal Michael Cahill found out in the 1990s and early 2000s as he rose through the ranks of the Millburn School District after growing up in grittier Hoboken, 40 minutes away.

Cahill — who retired from the Millburn schools in 2017 and lives with his family in Florham Park — has just self-published his memoir, "The Schooling of a 21st Century Principal," in which he candidly conveys the ups and downs of being a school administrator in modern times, particularly in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country.

"This was not a community that took 'no' for an answer," Cahill writes in one chapter. "Parents' efforts to push their kids into accelerated classes bordered on desperation ... I was once ordered to appear in front of an administrative law judge about our placement process. I have had parents yell, cry, insult and threaten."

Cahill, whose grandparents immigrated from Italy, grew up in Hoboken in his family's house on Fifth Street (the house is still in the family). He graduated from Sts. Peter & Paul School and then from Hoboken High School in 1978.

Read more about about Cahill's memories of Hoboken, and what it was like running a middle school in Millburn, in our story on Millburn Patch today: Former Millburn Middle School Principal Tells All