Admittedly, we have been here since Jan 1971. When we moved in, the taxes were about half of what we now pay (and we thought they were very high then!). When we moved in Ridgewood was in the highest grouping in both national and state rankings. When we moved in there were approximately half the number of support staff. When we moved in, Ridgewood had some internal problems, Glen school had a Kindergarten teacher who actually told me “What did I do to deserve your child? She claims that kindergarten is for reading, writing, and arithmetic when the state law clearly states that that is not what kindergarten is for. I had a student just like her first semester and I had him promoted to first grade.” This was after I had already been told that both my first and second graders would have to be skipped because they were too far ahead of the comparable classes of Glen School students. And we came from an inner city public school! This is the point that the Ed center hired several “specialists” to make sure each school was learning the same material as the others. But the schools were far better then than now. Gifted and talented was a class in the grade schools–not now. Ridgewood has to spend so much time and money on special education that the gifted, and non-gifted, are given no extra challenges. Read the paper. Does Ridgewood participate in robots and all the other advance things that most of the area schools send students to compete in. Even the Debate team (if it still exists) never receives any recognition. Athletes, sure, but non-athletic competitions do not seem to exist any more. Yet our budget gets bigger and bigger with Ridgewood continuing to go down in almost every way. Our high school has decided one lunch period is sufficient. The cafeteria was designed for multi period uses and is too small for one lunch period. Kids actually eat sitting on hall floors. And we say we’re “excellent”?
