In 1903, the Barnegat City School was built on West 5th Street and Central Ave, consisting of a single room with bathrooms and coat closets in the entranceways, of which there was one for boys and one for girls. An older school based out of a residential cottage on West 3rd Street previously educated small classes of children from the 1880s. Shortly after the new school was opened, the former school and neighboring houses caught fire. The one-room school closed in 1951 at the end of the school year due to increasing class sizes after World War II and the plan to consolidate the Island town schools under one roof, which became the Ethel A. Jacobsen Elementary School in Surf City and later the additional LBI Grade School in Ship Bottom.