NJ’s top three supers open up about life inside the system
All told, the three men represent more than 50 years of school leadership — in different New Jersey communities with different challenges.
Whatever their differences, however, the three share a common bond: They were named yesterday as the top school superintendents in their regions. They also share a common sentiment: the expectations and pressures now facing New Jersey’s schools are unprecedented, especially in the face of constrained resources and strict caps.
They weren’t complaining about their jobs, something they made clear in a joint interview with NJ Spotlight. Recent changes in the state’s tenure laws and coming changes in curriculum offered some equally unprecedented opportunities, they said. (Mooney, NJ Spotlight)
A state Democratic campaign worker accused of stealing GOP signs
A state Democratic campaign worker was arrested early Tuesday morning, suspected of stealing signs supporting two Republican Bergen County Freeholder candidates, police said.
Mahwah Police Detective Kevin Hebert and Officer Michael Blondin were investigating another matter near the Mountainside Avenue entrance to Route 17 south around 12:40 a.m. when they saw David M. Gins, 27, of Washington, D.C., remove a “Re-elect [Rob] Hermansen and Elect [Peg] Watkins” sign from the ground and put it on the floor behind the driver’s seat of a Chevrolet Traverse with New Jersey license plates, Chief James Batelli said Tuesday.
The officers approached the vehicle and discovered eight identical signs to the one that had been removed and several blue blue signs supporting the reelection of Sen. Bob Menendez, he said. (Pries, The Record)
The RHS Upper Level Latin Academic Team took first place at its first competition of the season at Montclair State University on October 19. The team competed with 17 regional schools in Latin grammar, Roman life and Greco-Roman mythology.
Pictured left to right with their gold medals and gift book are: Francesca Felder, Vidushi Sharma, Akari Armatas, Megan Felder, Britta Potter and Zoe Blecher-Cohen. Latin teachers are Catherine Venturini (Academic Team Coach) and Stefanie Gigante.
Election Day: Judge blocks N.J. media from interviewing voters exiting polls on election day
A federal judge in Trenton ruled Tuesday against a coalition of more than 100 New Jersey newspapers that sought to allow reporters to interview and photograph voters as they leave polling places on Election Day.
District Judge Joel A. Pisano said at a hearing that the state’s restriction on certain activities near the state’s 3,200 polling places was content neutral and designed to protect voters from obstructions as they head to the polls.
“Voters are entitled and have a right to a free, unfettered, unrestricted path to and from a polling place,” he said, adding that he was concerned with creating a “fire drill” by changing voting rules in the state less than two weeks before a presidential election. (Campisi, The Record)
White House told of militant claim two hours after Libya attack: emails
By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:11pm EDT
(Reuters) – Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.
The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.
The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.
Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.
While officials did mention the possible involvement of “extremists,” they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.
“The property could be in a new downtown development area,” said Albert Pucciarelli
TUESDAY OCTOBER 23, 2012, 11:15 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
The need for a new hydraulic lift at Ridgewood’s central garage on Chestnut Street opened preliminary discussion on the overall future of the building.
With the closing of the Ken Smith Motors dealership last month and buzz of a multi-family housing proposal to take its place, Deputy Mayor Albert Pucciarelli said that particular block might be primed for new development. That notion prompted second thoughts as council members moved forward to approve funding for the equipment repair.
The Village Council will hold a special public hearing on Wednesday, Oct. 24 and consider a capital ordinance that appropriates $40,000 to cover the purchase price and installation of an in-ground hydraulic lift at the garage. The lift is used to maintain and repair the village’s fleet of vehicles.
“We had a major lift go down, and the repair replacement cost has sky-rocketed,” Village Manager Ken Gabbert said during a council meeting earlier this month. “What we’re looking for right now is that we move forward on this to lock in the contractor to do the work once we have the funding in place.”
Radio communications upgrade approved for Ridgewood and Glen Rock
TUESDAY OCTOBER 23, 2012, 11:00 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
The village is moving forward with a much-discussed radio communications upgrade for its emergency services, approving a total of $1,067,935 for the project.
The passage of the ordinance appropriating the money came without discussion from members of the public and the Ridgewood governing body last Wednesday, a change from the special meetings and sessions that filled the council’s calendar for the greater portion of this year. By approving the expense and putting the plan in place, Ridgewood will now comply with the Federal Communications Commission’s narrowband directive.
Ridgewood’s communications improvements will include three separate projects. For the first portion, which became known as Part A Option 1, the village will purchase and install radio upgrades for a sum of $693,750. That total includes all the material and work needed for installation as well as overall infrastructure improvements.
Valley is No. 1 in New Jersey for Cardiac Care, Cardiac Surgery, and Coronary Interventional Procedures
October 23, 2012 – Valley was ranked No.1 in New Jersey in three cardiac clinical areas today by Healthgrades, the leading provider of information to help consumers make an informed decision about a physician or hospital. The findings are part of American Hospital Quality Outcomes 2013: Healthgrades Report to the Nation, which evaluates the performance of approximately 4,500 hospitals nationwide across nearly 30 of the most common conditions and procedures.
In addition to the recognitions for excellence in cardiac care, Healthgrades gave The Valley Hospital high marks in several other clinical areas, including orthopedics, neurosurgery and general surgery. For a detailed listing of Valley’s recent Healthgrades recognitions, please visit www.ValleyHealth.com/Awards.
“I am very proud that Valley has received these distinguished recognitions,” said Audrey Meyers, President and CEO of The Valley Hospital and Valley Health System. “We understand that patients today have options when it comes to choosing a healthcare provider and it is our goal to be the hospital of choice for the communities we serve. These outstanding recognitions are testament to the priority Valley staff and physicians place on achieving the highest-quality clinical outcomes, while delivering the most compassionate care.”
Patient outcomes are important to consumers making choices today about hospitals. According to new research conducted by Harris Interactive for Healthgrades, 86 percent of Americans in 27 top designated market areas agree they would be more likely to choose—or not choose—a hospital if they could learn ahead of time the complication and mortality rates for a certain procedure.
For its 2013 hospital quality outcomes analysis, Healthgrades evaluated approximately 40 million Medicare hospitalization records for services performed from 2009 through 2011 at approximately 4,500 short-term, acute care hospitals nationwide. Healthgrades independently measures hospitals based on data that hospitals submit to the federal government. No hospital can opt in or out of being measured, and no hospital pays to be measured. Mortality and complication rates are risk adjusted, which takes into account each hospital’s unique population (demographics and severity of illness).
Star Ledger: Kyrillos on U.S. Senate bid: “I felt a sense of duty to run”
State Sen. Joe Kyrillos (R – Monmouth), the Republican challenger to incumbent U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), made a campaign stop in a North Jersey sporting goods store earlier this month that sums up his campaign.
Inside Birkenmeier Sport Shop on Main Street in Hackensack, a store that caters to soccer lovers, Kyrillos was speaking to Hubert Birkenmeier and Andranik Eskandarian, two 1970s-era New York Cosmos professional soccer stars and good friends, who run the store together. According to the two teammates and small businessmen, one hard fact of New Jersey economic life could run them into the ground.
“Taxes are killing us,” Birkenmeier, 63, of Wyckoff, said, a reference to New Jersey’s high property taxes, the highest in the nation. “The [Democrats] don’t make things affordable. Everything is going up – health care, insurance, everything. We want to stay alive. We want to keep business going.”
“[The Democrats] talk about millionaires and billionaires, but there’s just a couple of millionaires and billionaires. They’re going to raise taxes on you,” Kyrillos, 52, of Middletown, said in response. “This is the kind of small business that we’re talking about.”
Kyrillos and his rival Menendez are now traveling Main Streets across the Garden State in the final weeks of the campaign. They are waging rhetorical war over who will best represent New Jersey’s middle class and small business people, beleaguered by a troubled national economy and New Jersey’s onerous property taxes.
As he campaigned for the Senate seat that would take him to Washington, D.C., Kyrillos outlined why he thinks he is the better man for the job, and why he wants to change jobs at all.
According to Kyrillos , “The Corzine economic strategy pursued by Bob Menendez has led to higher gas prices, higher unemployment, and declining incomes,” said Kyrillos Campaign Manager Chapin Fay. “By contrast, Joe has worked with Governor Christie in a bipartisan way to bring New Jersey back from the brink as it was left nearly bankrupt by those same policies. They have passed balanced budgets, instituted teacher tenure reform, and made our pension systems viable for the future. Joe faced our toughest challenges head on. Now it’s time to let him do the same in Washington.”
New Jersey police eye possible link between Autumn Pasquale’s death and recent rash of abduction attempts
By Cristina Corbin
Published October 23, 2012
FoxNews.com
Police in northern New Jersey are probing a possible link between a recent string of abduction attempts and the death of 12-year-old Autumn Pasquale, whose body was found stuffed inside a recycling container in the southern part of the state.
Pasquale, of Clayton, was last seen riding her bike away from her father’s home on Saturday afternoon. After an extensive search of the area, investigators found the girl’s body at 10 p.m. Monday night inside a recycling container not far from the home. An autopsy is still under way to determine the cause of death.
The grisly discovery comes as police in northern New Jersey hunt for a suspect or suspects responsible for at least eight kidnapping attempts in Bergen County. Authorities there say they are investigating a possible connection between Pasquale’s death and the reported incidents in Westwood, Oradell, Hawthorne, New Milford, Maywood, Hackensack, Fair Lawn and Ridgewood.
“We are absolutely investigating whether there is a link,” Westwood Police Chief Frank Regino told FoxNews.com. “There certainly is a possibility and only time will tell. We’re looking into every possible angle that we can.”
Investigators say the abduction attempts in Bergen County all involve the luring of young girls by a stranger described as a middle-aged man with white hair.
In the Westood case, a 13-year-old girl said she was approached by a man while walking alone to school at around 7:10 a.m. on Thursday. She said the suspect, whom she described as a white middle-age male with a crew cut and receding hairline, pulled up next to her in a gray four-door hatchback. The girl reported seeing an NYPD sticker on the left-front windshield, Regino said.
The most brazen kidnapping attempt occurred last week in Hawthorne, where a man tried to drag a 13-year-old girl off a crowded soccer field and into a nearby woods. The girl managed to escape by kicking and screaming, authorities said. The suspect was dressed in a dark hooded sweatshirt and jeans.
Police are unsure whether the same man is involved in all the kidnapping attempts in Bergen County. They said it’s possible the suspect could be disguising himself or switching vehicles.
Westwood is about 120 miles from where Pasquale lived in Clayton. The 12-year-old girl was last seen pedaling her white BMX bicycle away from the home where she lived with her father, her two siblings, her father’s girlfriend and the girlfriend’s children.
Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli told FoxNews.com that it would be a “real reach” to connect Pasquale to the abduction attempts in northern New Jersey until more information is known. It’s not clear whether Pasquale was lured by a stranger, he said.
Ridgewood’s Jessica Greco breakfast Giants with Eli Manning
October 23,2012
the staff of the Rdigewood blog
Ridgewood NJ , Last month, Dunkin’ Donuts conducted a Facebook sweepstakes where 10 lucky fans would have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have breakfast with New York Giants Superstar Eli Manning. One of those lucky winners is Jessica Greco of Ridgewood, NJ.
Tuesday, October 23rd Jessica and her guest headed to MetLife Stadium to meet and have breakfast at the Legacy Room with Eli Manning.
In addition, Jessica will also decorate donuts with Eli during the breakfast.
Summer is over, but Graydon Pool hours are on Ridgewood Council agenda
TUESDAY OCTOBER 23, 2012, 11:07 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
The Ridgewood Council will discuss Graydon Pool’s hours of operation, specifically focusing on the facility’s start time for the first and last three weeks of the swimming season.
During Wednesday’s public work session, council members are expected to weigh the pros and cons of opening the pool at 10 a.m. during the first three weeks of June, while village schools are still in progress. They will also evaluate a 10 a.m. start time for the closing weeks of August.
Prior to the 2012 swim season, council members opted to open the pool at 10 a.m. instead of the usual noon for the first three weeks of June. Because attendance during that time was deemed adequate, officials voted to keep the 10 a.m. start time for the final three weeks of the season.
Village officials deemed this past season as a test run, and council members plan to open the discussion for 2013 this week.
“We want to get this done early so we can have it on the [village] calendar,” Mayor Paul Aronsohn said earlier this month. “My personal view is that [the 10 a.m. start] is money well spent.”
Tim Cronin, director of the Parks and Recreation Department, said final head counts and financial reports would be ready for the work session on Wednesday. He previously indicated to the council that the head count ranged between zero to 19 pool patrons from 10 a.m. to noon during the first three weeks of June.
Pay gap between government, private sector widens to 34 percent
Friday – 10/19/2012, 6:42pm EDT
By Jack Moore
More Reports
The gap in pay between federal employees and private-sector workers has jumped 8 percentage points since last year, according to new data presented at a Federal Salary Council meeting Friday.
On average, federal employees earn 34 percent less than their private-sector counterparts, according to the council’s analysis.
The pay gap, which is calculated using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics based on pay in 34 locality pay areas, was 26 percent last year.
The council, which is made up of labor representatives and pay experts, makes recommendations on federal pay to the President’s Pay Agent.
Over the last several years, the council’s analysis has shown the pay gap increasingly widening.
Still, two years after President Barack Obama proposed a two-year pay freeze for civilian government employees, the issue of whether and how much feds are underpaid remains contentious.
A Congressional Budget Office study released in January found, overall, federal employees actually earn about 2 percent more in wages compared to private-sector workers, with wider differences based on education level.
But a June 2011 report from the the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, indicated government pay outstripped private-sector pay by 14 percent.
In reviewing various statistics on federal pay, the Government Accountability Office said the widely divergent results were due to the different methodologies the various studies used. Attempting to compare or extrapolate from them would be “potentially problematic,” GAO auditors said.
U.S. Government’s Foreign Debt Now $47,495 Per Household
By Terence P. Jeffrey
October 22, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – The debt that the U.S. government owes to foreign interests now equals approximately $47,495 for each household in the United States, according to the latest data released by the U.S. Treasury and the Census Bureau.
The portion of the U.S. government’s foreign debt now owed to interests in Mainland China is about $10,090 per household.
At the end of August, the latest period reported by the U.S. Treasury, foreign interests held a total of $5,430,000,000,000 in U.S. government debt. According to the Census Bureau’s latest estimate (which was for June 2012) there were 114,328,000 households in the United States. Therefore, the total U.S. government debt held by foreign interests was about $47,494.93 per household.
Obama Supporters Continue Threats To Riot, Assassinate Romney
Secret Service attention fails to dampen violent Twitter comments
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
October 23, 2012
Despite the issue garnering a significant amount of media interest as well as the attention of the Secret Service, Obama supporters continued their threats to riot and assassinate Mitt Romney if Obama loses in the aftermath of last night’s presidential debate.
As we reported last week, Twitter has been flooded recently with violent comments from Obama supporters. The increase in volume of the comments seemed to coincide with Romney’s poll numbers edging higher against Obama.
Not only have Obama voters been making open threats that they will riot and cause mayhem, they have also been caught making direct threats to assassinate Mitt Romney, prompting the Secret Service to announce that it was “aware” of the threats and would “conduct appropriate follow up if necessary.”
Despite the fact that the media reported extensively on threats made against Obama prior to the 2008 election, their silence on the threats made against Romney has been deafening. Indeed, the act of a few old guys hanging up empty chairs in reference to Clint Eastwood’s RNC speech garnered substantially more coverage and concern from the press compared to hundreds if not thousands of tweets threatening violence against Mitt Romney.
Americans who simply display political signs expressing opposition to Obama’s policies have been treated as potential violent threats by authorities in the past, and yet not a single Twitter user has faced retribution for making direct and sometimes graphic death threats against Romney.
Leftists routinely cry foul and attempt to demonize conservatives as violent extremists whenever online rhetoric gets heated, and yet when their own engage in even worse conduct, their behavior is absolved and the media is disinterested.
