>Immediate work needed to be done:
– Restore home to school trust with clear expectations of the school
– Remove reform math programs TERC2 and CMP2 immediately as Administrator should be a proponent of world class practices and opponent of educational fads and failed practices.
– Restore gifted education with a dedicated budget amount for each school and document clear accelerated work goals in each school for such students.
– Restore content and academic achievement as the primary goal of our educational system across K-8.
– Revamp curriculum department to provide world class standards (capable of an A rating by an independent foundation) across all subject matters. Standards should de-emphasize pedagogy and emphasize knowledge to be learned and mastered.
Short Term Work To Be Done
– Perform an accounting of how much tutoring community has provided over the past 5 years. Of importance is the WHY behind the various tutoring and also the personal cost (time,money) spent. Offer plan of action for district to improve upon providing and meeting the needs over outside services.
– Eliminate authentic assessment and document the clear, concise, objective assessment that must be done for the students.
– Dissolve PRISM & Grant Wiggins affliations.
– Make a mission statement of Ridgewood Public Schools to be to provide an education to its children worthy of a world class ranking. And document that world class standards (This should effectively eliminate all dependence on standars from private teacher organizations, wich as NCTM)
– Must be good with large budgets but be sure budgets will now provide textbooks and workbooks to students in all grades.
– Must be able to provide oversight of curriculum and instruction group to develop acceleration flight plans for our top performing students (those that are not tested as gifted but are operating above the group). Ability grouping. Eliminate over dependence on group work; especially in those age groups where inappropriate (K-8).
– Must be willing tackle open campus issue at the High School, violence in the school and holding accountable all involved.
– Provide a strong voice in the community to ensure saftey of student environment (construction for 10+ years near a middle school should be a cause for concern by the school district and voiced by a capable leader)
– Be proactive and open and accountable. For example, provide cost of materials when the local reporter asks for it or hold accountable the department, supervisor, for the answer. Require your leadership team to return phone calls, emails, letters promptly and to follow through on answering questions to the satisfaction of the inquiring person.
And finally, recognize this is a partnership with the community but since we pay for this respect our voice as being as important as yours.
Administrator with an affection for educational fads need not apply. Administrator must value content knowledge and have demonstrated such work in prior districts. Adminisrator seeking glory or publication need not apply. Administrator will be subject to googling.
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>Nicely done. Too bad our BOE is too busy garnering lamentable characteristics from the “stakeholders” they so love to communicate with. Like the HSA types and those who are beholden to them.
You’ve done their job for them, but they are not smart enough to notice.
>The new superintendent should also look at how many students attend private high schools instead of RHS.
>Okay who’s going to step up to the plate and turn this into a petition?
>Why do we need a petition?
>Petitions are a waste of time as our BOE has little regard for them. It seems that our board members are only interested in seeing whose name is on the petition so they can call those individuals and harrass them.
>A petition for a recall of the BOE is what is needed first.
ANY Super. will work FOR the BOE so no matter who we hire he’ll still be tied to the BOE.
Get rid of the wasted BOE and start over with new.
>I’ve been reading your blog with much interest because it seems my district (in another state) has some of the same issues. We are using TERC investigations this year and so far there hasn’t been any publicity on the fact that many school districts such as yours are up in arms over it.
I plan to stay tuned to see what happens.
>Parents have threatened a petition to recall the BOE for years. The problem is when you get rid of one bad apple there’s whole bunch of other bad apples.
>Stokley NEVER worked for the BOE. They hung on his every word and action.
Porter also CONTROLLED the BOE.
>Paula V…you should check out the RW website http://www.vormath.info and the New York City website http://www.nychold.com
TERC is being battled everywhere and if no one is saying anything in your district it’s because the parents are too busy working to notice the odd math program or they bought into all the propaganda that the curriculum companies and districts provide.
Just goolge “TERC”, “Reform Math”, “Standards Based Math”, “NCTM Math” and you’ll have plenty of reading.
Get your kid a tutor right away.
>I guess if you’re going to dream about a superintendent to meet the listed criteria, then you might as well dream big. Good luck!
>Being the egomaniac that I am, I find it extremely hard to write the following: I could not have written a better job description if I tried. In fact, whoever wrote the job description is my candidate for the job of Superintendant of Schools from now intil the day he/she dies. Amen, brother. Where art thou?
>12:24
They are also GONE, before their time.
Why because of the BOE.
Porters quote to the BOE ” its my ship and i’ll run it the way i see fit”. Something like that.
He didn’t last long.
Stokley saw the change in the BOE policies and jumped ship.
Get a new board and then the superintendent
>I find the posting and remarks quite funny. Thank goodness none of you have courage to run for the BOE! Both the BOE and administration should be commended for what they do.
>I find the posting and remarks quite funny. Thank goodness none of you have courage to run for the BOE! Both the BOE and administration should be commended for what they do. ….not as funny as your friends destroying the Ridgewood School system
>12:12 AM “courage to run for the BOE.” Are you kidding me????
Those idiiots on the board completely lack courage and are seriously impaired when it comes to education. They don’t even know how to google, for goodness sakes. They’ve wrecked a system that worked quite well before they decided to tinker with it and add every new fad that came by. They just buy every new toy they see and then moan about how expensive education is.
What are they? Spoiled children!!!
>2:12am I suggest you should be sleeping at that hour rather than attempting to post comments. The extra sleep might give you some perspective.
>2:12 AM
Must have been up late after the meeting and then closed the OFFICE ( on Chestnut St. that is ).
With a little help from Mr. Johnny Walker and or Jim Beam, he was able to get the courage to write some totaly stupid thing in the Blog.
>You had a superintendant…Paul Arilotta, but he was bypassed for a more attractive clown.
The grass (or the turf) ain’t always greener….
>The gist of the problem seems to be partly that the elected officials haven’t a clue what the hired hands are up to. Just look at the published comments from the board members about TERC/CMP. They had no idea what the programs entailed or their political bent. Someone needs to be watching the store who knows what all the educrat mumbojumbo is and what the program administrators are up to.
>1:02pm You had a superintendant …but he was bypassed for a more attractive clown.
Are you trying to say we had a clown already but since that clown wasn’t attractive we went for a different clown?
Why would we want a clown in the first place?
>I don’t think Paul Arilotta was suitable for the superintendency in our super school system.
>Looking at the agenda for the next BOE meeting, can someone tell me why we pay to send students to the Bergen Academies?
“Approval of 30 pupils attending the Bergen County Academies for 2007-2008, @ $7,000 per pupil.”
>Why do we pay to send students to the Bergen Academies?
Because their needs can’t be met at Ridgewood High School.
>and frankly it is cheaper to send them to Bergen Academies (one of the premier high schools in the United States)at 7k per student then to keep them here at 20k per student….
>5:13 you are correct. Who’s minding the store? This current crop of board members are in over their heads. They haven’t a clue what Regina is doing with our curriculum. They are merely soothed by words they believe are familiar to them, even if they mean something entirely different in practice.
They just don’t have the ability to deconstruct jargon. That is why we are so vulnerable to our schools becoming more and more political with its focus on leftist fads and agendas.
Sad, but true.
>HEY Bloggers,
Lets see some names of people willing to run for the BOE.
Stop all the crap and do something.
I’m here over 30 yrs and did my time in Better times.
Now it’s up to you younger folks to protect your childern and improve the school system.
AND maybe I’ll get a tax break to boot.
>Who’s paying $20K per student???
Get the facts straight – we pay under $12K.
>$12K is still a whole lot more than $7K.
>Let’s do a head count.
I’d like to see our residents polled to find out how many of our village children DO NOT attend our public schools and why. I think we would be surprised at the high number.
Also, how many children who live in other towns attend our schools and why. I know our teachers who live in other towns can have their children attend our schools for free.
>I think that is a nice perk for being a WORKING PARENT and the education system should get a kudos for that.
How nice to have your kid where you are when your working.
But definitely lets see how many residents are going elsewhere and why.
Let’s find out why exactly Ridgewood Public Schools have turned the Village into TUTORville.
Just what are the tutoring numbers?
>The fact remains that for all the special education we have in this town…we do not have a gifted student program. There is a portion of the student population in this town that is underserved…those kids that excel and need more challenges then some AP courses in high school….and certainly those kids are going to other schools in addition to Bergen Academies.
I would also like to see the stats of how many teachers bring their kids into our school system that don’t live in town. Our schools are busting at the seams and we are spending a huge amount of tax dollars on expansions of all our schools, yet we allow more kids to come into our system that we are paying 12k a year per child to educate.
That is a HUGE perk for teachers that are some of the highest paid in Bergen County(please don’t bang the drum that they don’t get paid enough for the work that they do, I too would like the summers off).
What is that perk costing us taxpayers? It is completely invisible to us….and it goes beyond the day to day dollar costs….it is services that may be denied to taxpayers because a teacher that lives two towns over(paying significantly lower taxes) brings their kids here and is taking the place of someone here that may need the service but does not qualify because there are too many kids that need it more then your kid….
How many teachers kids go to school here and what is the cost to the taxpayers.
>Interesting points 1:13. Does the BOE think that if we do not provide free schooling to the children of teachers that we will not attract the best?
This is funny since we don’t seem to hire the best in the first place.
>9:47 PM,
“Who’s paying $20K per student???
Get the facts straight – we pay under $12K.”
It is more like $13,500.00 and that is not counting on the health and pension plan contributions paid by the state (with our money)but hey, what’s a grand here or there between neighbors.
>The highest in NJ is an Asbury Park district which comes in at $25K, followed by Newark at $22K. Both are Abbott designated districts, which means that local taxes only cover a miniscule portion of this cost–like 8%. The rest is borne by us the NJ taxpayers. The union has a nice deal going for their members–not educating the kids and living pretty nicely off the rest of us. How many teachers have vacation homes? You’d be surprised. In NJ, teachers average $77,000 per year (only 182 days–the rest of us must work some 245 days). Nice work if you can get it. Oh, they get to retire on a virtually full pension with full health benefits at the ripe old age of 55. 55!!!. Not only do they have vacation homes, they can actually hang out in them.