MovieChat Forums > The Goldbergs (2013) Discussion > Where do they go to school?

Where do they go to school?

posted 5 years ago by MAGolding (1240)
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Where do the Goldberg kids and their friends go to school?

At the William Penn Academy.

William Penn Academy appears to be a fictional school. But where is the William Penn Academy supposed to be? Is it in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, where the Goldbergs lived in the 1980s, or miles away in Philadelphia, and do the kids walk, ride, or drive there?

I went to high school in Jenkintown, but it was the public high school. I took my SAT test at another high school at Jenkintown, and I looked up that school today:

Abington Friends High School at 575 Washington Lane is just outside the border of Jenkintown, and has been in its present grounds since it was founded in 1697, 323 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abington_Friends_School

Abington Friends is only 0.2 miles from 405 Newbold Road where the real Goldberg family lived, so since I started watching The Goldbergs a couple of years ago I sort of assumed that the fictional Goldbergs went to school there.

But the fictional William Penn Academy is said to be based on the real William Penn Charter School, commonly called Penn Charter, founded 331 years ago in 1689, which is at 3000 West School House Lane, Philadelphia, PA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn_Charter_School

As a child, I lived a block from School House Lane and less than a mile from Penn Charter, so i know the distance between Jenkintown and Penn Charter quite well.

The real Goldbergs lived at 405 Newbold Road, which is about one mile from the Jenkintown train station via West Avenue. If the real Goldberg kids took the train to get to Penn Charter, they would still have have needed other transportation at both ends. They may have been driven by their parents and driven themselves when old enough. The drive to Penn Charter would be about 7.2 miles depending on the route used.

i always walked to high school and so never thought about how the fictional Goldberg kids got to William Penn Academy until today. If it was in Philadelphia like Penn Charter instead of in Jenkintown like Abington friends, going there and back home every day would be a more major undertaking.

So where is the fictional location of William Penn Academy?

[–] Ldlamb (655) 5 years ago

Goldberg was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and lived in nearby Jenkintown. His parents are Beverly (née Solomon) (born October 8, 1943) and the late Murray Goldberg (September 25, 1940 – February 1, 2008);[3] he is the youngest of three boys, with brothers Barry (born October 15, 1969) and Eric (born August 18, 1967).He produced his first play, Dr. Pickup, in 1992 at the age of 15, and won the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival.He graduated from the William Penn Charter School in 1994 and graduated from New York University in 1998 after double-majoring in film and dramatic writing.

Obviously, it really happened....and The show is not really completely fiction so I’m sure the characters do whatever the real family did.

[–] MAGolding (1240) 5 years ago

In the Schooled episode "Garden Party" on 25 March 2020, Principal Glascott has to give up his parking space and in one scene he says he is tired because he had to walk to the William Penn Academy from where he parked, at the Willow Grove Mall 2 miles away.

The Willow Grove Mall is north of Jenkintown. Two miles north of the Willow Grove Mall would be near Horsham and Hatboro, two miles west would be near Jarret, Dresher, and Ardsley, two miles east would be near Bethayres, Bryn Athen, and Huntington Valley, and two miles south would be near Glenside, Rydal, and Jenkintown.

The Willow Grove Mall is about 11.1 miles from the William Penn Charter School, while only approximately 4.1 miles by road from Abington Friends High School, so it seems likely that the fictional William Penn academy should be in Jenkintown, or north of it in Abington closer to the Willow Grove Mall.

Of course other episodes of The Goldbergs or of Schooled may indicate that William Penn Academy is in Jenkintown, Philadelphia, or some other community.

[–] MAGolding (1240) 5 years ago

In the Goldbergs episode "Body Swap" 26 February 2020 one story had William Penn Academy announce a rule change. Seniors were permitted to leave the campus for lunch, and it was being extended to juniors like Adam and his friends. But the juniors had to be enrolled for that privilege, and they had to have their parents sign their permission papers.

Adam's mother Beverly Goldberg refused to give him permission, saying she didn't want him wandering the "dangerous streets of Jenkintown".

My family moved to Jenkintown when I was only eleven, and they never had any problems letting me walk the "dangerous streets of Jenkintown" by, for example, going to the public library almost every day after school. In my six years in high school I walked home for lunch every day except one, as far as I remember. And possibly I was breaking the rules - if so, nobody noticed in six years of high school. Anyway, it was a different decade and a different school system.

So it looks like the 2019-2020 seasons of The Goldbergs and Schooled both have the William Penn Academy located in Jenkintown.

But possibly other seasons have put or will put the William Penn Academy in some other community.

[–] BourbonKing (5789) 4 years ago

If you look carefully, you can see palm trees in the background in a lot of exterior shots. Totally Pennsylvania