News: Director of Special Programs submits resignation
Dear Parents, Guardians and Staff:
On Tuesday, February 26, 2019, Director of Special Programs Dr. Kim Buxenbaum submitted her letter of resignation. The Ridgewood Board of Education will accept her resignation at its next public meeting on March 11, 2019.
Dr. Buxenbaum is leaving the Ridgewood Public Schools to take the position of Director of Special Education with the New Jersey Department of Education. Dr. Buxenbaum is a very talented educator and I am confident that she will be very successful and have a positive impact at the State level.
Please know that hiring a new Director of Special Programs is a top priority. I have already begun the search process and will be sharing more information with the public in the near future. In the interim, I am confident that our administrators in the Department of Special Programs will ably continue to support the staff and families of our special education students.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Buxenbaum on her new position with the State of New Jersey and wishing her all the best in her career.
Sincerely yours,
Daniel Fishbein, Ed.D
Superintendent of Schools
Bashing of the disabled starts in 5, 4, 3…..
When your school district is competitive because of its special needs programs – which act as a magnet to attract special need students and their families – but your SAT scores are 23rd in the state, and your high school can’t produce statistically significant numbers of students gaining acceptance to the best colleges and universities in the country, something needs to change.
The Fish is next
When the Ivys get 70,000-90,000 applications for 4,000 spots there are going to be a lot of disappointed people. BTW “the fish is next” grow up.
I graduated in the 80’s and RHS had many ivy acceptances among the best of the best students. Founded in 1991, the Bergen County Academies now draws the best of the best students which means, brace yourself, RHS has fewer ivy acceptances.
James, the person that keeps posting that our schools can’t produce statistically significant numbers of students gaining acceptance to the best colleges and universities and other unsupported bullS**T is “fake news”. Please have this CNN employee find some proof or evidence as we have asked for in the past. This is what I see…. https://www.schooldigger.com/go/NJ/schools/1383000764/school.aspx
And for the 4 generations of my family that have been here, nobody sees it as a decline over the decades either. He or she is free to hate the people running the schools but the facts show our kids perform great and are accepted to great schools (regardless of opinions about people teaching and running the schools). I previously also spot checked the acceptance rates at the Ivy’s (since he or she has also mentioned them frequently) and RHS’s acceptance is better than those schools advertise as the national rate. Which is pretty impressive given one would expect our kids to be up against a negative bias as the Ivies strive for both geographic and racial of diversity.
On top of all of that; if ranked against other public schools, (excluding the ones that are by acceptance such as Bergen Acad), RHS is top 10. Granted the goal is to be #1 but it is fake news to say it is declining or not getting kids into competitive schools at acceptable rates. This person must also be the the one that thinks downtown Ridgewood is lined with illicit massage parlors and gang members dealing drugs while patrolling with pit bulls. While it is humorous to the rest of us that live here and know the truth, but it is also harmful for us all to have such untruths posted as headlines. IF they produce anything other than some anecdotal BS it would be helpful to see it. Otherwise, it is just hurting all of us by making Ridgewood sound like Paterson. Which it is not. Is this person some kind of real estate developer trying to drive property values down so they can buy?
Bill, do you work for the REA, NJEA or BOE? RHS ranks 23rd for SAT scores and 26th in the state according to latest Niche rankings. Yet we spend $110 million on our annual BOE budget. Are you voting “yes” to support the current budget proposal? Can you explain why? Generally in the private sector when your business (as viewed by outside third parties like school rankings and university admissions offices in this case) have been in decline for a few decades and aren’t improving, good governance mandates that the Board change the leadership group. Do you think this current leadership group can reverse the trend? If no, what’s your point then apart from making continuous excuses for the BOE?
Why do you keep talking about the Ivies? The post said “best colleges and universities” not “Ivies”. The fact remains that RHS does not place a statistically significant number of students in the best post high school programs anymore, including the Juilliard, Parsons, RISD, SVA, etc. colleges aren’t competing for our students anymore. Why is this acceptable to you?
I agree with Bill. I don’t even read the posts about education anymore. The horse has been beaten to death.
I wouldn’t hire an Ivy brat. While shaking your hand they are looking over your shoulder to see who walked in the door to see if that person can help get the next job.
Anonymous, I attended an Ivy League school many years ago. I wouldn’t consider myself a “brat”, as you say. There are plenty of people who behave the way you describe *without* having attended an Ivy League credentials. So, that claim is without merit.
To address: “…but the facts show our kids perform great and are accepted to great schools …”
I think it’s important to look at the data (not just claim that they “get into great schools”, which we can all agree that they DO).
The original point, I believe, was that we are not graduating as many students accepted to Ivy League schools as, say, Tenafly (which is a similar demographic).
And, that begs the question: WHY? (naturally, there will be many theories… and I don’t have one)
Hi Jonathan. I would agree with you, if there was any evidence that we are not graduating as many students accepted to top schools. My cooment was that From what I see in Naviant and other reports that claim remains unsubstantiated. The person making those comments seems to just say our schools are in decline but there is no evidence of that. If the argument is that we pay too high taxes , well that might have merit. To claim our kids don’t do well with not supporting evidence I’d different . The ranking this person sited only barely ranks Tenefly higher and it is because RHS gets a “B” for diversity and Tenefly gets a B+. I personally don’t care about diversity and RHS is ranked top in the other things that matter to most of us. I don’t know why the other person keeps saying unsupported comments
3 Kinds has a point. The Academies were set up by an education politico who scammed a way to build a school out of a vo-tech, call it a place for different kinds of learners, skim the cream from the Bergen County towns AND get the towns to pay after stealing the students. Basically, it’s a private school built with public monies. All run by democrat freeloaders who are against charter schools – unless it’s THEIR charter school. Nice scam.