I’m sorry 11:05, a chemist with 20 yrs experience may be a great chemist, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that he can teach it well to others. There are other skills involved besides the basic skill of chemistry. To teach you must convey it in a way that is both interesting and informative to be successful. I don’t understand why you think becoming certified as a teacher is jumping through a lot of hoops.
or . ” a chemist with 20 yrs experience may be a great chemist, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that he can teach it well to others. There are other skills involved besides the basic skill of chemistry. To teach you must convey it …”
True, but without the chemistry knowledge, a Chemistry teacher, with just “those other skills”, is nothing more than a con artist.
You need both sets of skills to be very effective, but if I had to choose one set of skills over the other, I’d choose the guy with the core chemistry knowledge.
Very few people are so, so ineffective at communication that they cannot convey any of their knowledge to others. However if you’re a great communicator with nothing of value to communicate, you are just wasting everyone’s time.
>Hackensack University Medical Center formally applied for state permission to reopen Pascack Valley Hospital
Hackensack formally applies to reopen Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2011 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY JUNE 1, 2011, 8:47 PM BY LINDY WASHBURN AND MARY JO LAYTON STAFF WRITERS THE RECORD
Hackensack University Medical Center formally applied for state permission Wednesday to reopen Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood as a 128-bed full-service community hospital. If approved, the for-profit hospital would open late next year.
The Westwood hospital closed due to bankruptcy in November 2007. The new plan aims to address the state’s looming physician shortage as well as provide patient care to the northeastern part of Bergen County, which has been underserved since Pascack closed due to bankruptcy in November 2007, said Robert C. Garrett, Hackensack’s president and chief executive officer.
The application is “the next phase of restoring much needed healthcare services to the Pascack Valley and Northern Valley,” Garrett said.
Although a final decision on the application is not expected until November, Hackensack’s joint-venture partner appears confident enough of the application’s success to have named a chief executive officer for the new facility.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2011 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY JUNE 1, 2011, 9:57 PM BY MICHAEL GARTLAND STAFF WRITER THE RECORD
Political contributions by Bergen County contractors — or potential contractors — to countywide candidates would be limited under a resolution introduced Wednesday by Freeholder Robert Hermansen.
The resolution is one of several drafts considered by the freeholder board’s pay-to-play reform committee, of which Hermansen, a Republican, serves as chairman.
Previous drafts featured higher limits than those in Wednesday night’s resolution, which would set contribution thresholds for businesses and individuals at $300 per candidate per year and a total of $2,500 annually for all candidates.
> Horror for US Economy as Data Falls off Cliff Published: Wednesday, 1 Jun 2011 | 2:09 PM ET Text Size By: Patrick Allen CNBC EMEA Head of News
The last month has been a horror show for the U.S. economy, with economic data falling off a cliff, according to Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London.
“It seems that almost every bit of data about the health of the US economy has disappointed expectations recently,” said Riddell, in a note sent to CNBC on Wednesday.
“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”
>“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” Yastrow said. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.
Wall Street Baffled by Slowing Economy, Low Yields: Trader Published: Wednesday, 1 Jun 2011 | 11:06 AM ET Text Size By: Margo D. Beller Special to CNBC.com
Wall Street is having a hard time figuring out what to do now that the U.S. economy appears to be sputtering and yields are so low, Peter Yastrow, market strategist for Yastrow Origer, told CNBC.
“What we’ve got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money,” he said. “They can not find a yield and you just don’t want to be putting your money into commodities or things that are punts that might work out or they might not depending on what happens with the economy.
> “There’s nothing in my practice or in conversations with the brain surgeons I interact with to suggest an increase in brain cancers at the same time there’s been an explosion of cellphone use,” said Dr. Anthony L. D’Ambrosio, director of the Neuro-Oncology Disease Management Team at the Institute for Brain and Spine Radiosurgery at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood.
Cellphones are ‘possibly carcinogenic,’ World Health Organization says
TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY MAY 31, 2011, 6:59 PM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS ASSOCIATED PRESS
A respected international panel of experts says cellphones can possibly cause cancer, putting them in the same category as the pesticide DDT, gasoline engine exhaust and coffee.
Classifying agents as “possibly carcinogenic” doesn’t mean they automatically cause cancer, and some experts said the ruling shouldn’t change people’s cellphone habits.
New Jersey Resources (NJR) has earned a reputation as a well-run energy business, delivering solid returns and growth to investors, primarily through its natural gas business. But its newest venture is bringing savings to electric customers by installing solar systems on homes and commercial facilities. (Johnson, NJ Spotlight)
There are seven seats on the state Supreme Court. Four votes are normally required to issue a binding opinion and order action. The ruling of the court last week on public school funding, mandating a half-billion-dollar increase in state aid for poor districts, was written by Justice Jaynee LaVecchia. (Ahearn, The Record)
The Common Core is being touted as the next national wave in school improvement, one that will reshape how public schools in New Jersey and elsewhere teach and test students. (Mooney, NJ Spotlight)
First, I want to thank you again for all of your support and well wishes and to share with you the highlights of our first 100 days in office.
The budget we presented to the Board of Freeholders is a whopping $30 million less than the budget proposed by my Democrat predecessor.
We have not added even one additional nickel to the County’s debt.
We have eliminated hundreds of cars from the County fleet and will be selling these excess vehicles at auction this spring and have cancelled all no-bid contracts saving millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.
I have vetoed the minutes of the Bergen County Utilities Authority, Bergen County Improvement Authority and Northwest Bergen Sewer Authority whenever these agencies have violated my strict rules on unnecessary spending and as a result have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.
We brought accountability and transparency to Bergen Community College without impacting the college’s mission.
We cancelled the Democrats plan to spend $2.6 million of your money to purchase a private theater.
Through our strict, conservative, fiscal policies we have not only frozen your County taxes but have actually reduced County taxes overall by some $75,000.
Yes, we have kept every campaign promise and more. We have restored fiscal and moral integrity to Bergen County and returned good government and all of its benefits to you the taxpayers while stomping out political abuse. You are the real winners. And the losers are those politicians, contractors and vendors who have profited at your expense for the past decade with no bid contracts and excessive spending!
> Pro-Obama media always shocked by bad economic news
As megablogger Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has noted with amusement, the word “unexpectedly” or variants thereon keep cropping up in mainstream media stories about the economy.
“New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed,” reported CNBC.com May 25.
“Personal consumption fell,” Business Insider reported the same day, “when it was expected to rise.”
“Durable goods declined 3.6 percent last month,” Reuters reported May 25, “worse than economists’ expectations.”
“Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall,” headlined Bloomberg News May 19.
“U.S. home construction fell unexpectedly in April,” wrote the Wall Street Journal May 18.
Those examples are all from the last two weeks. Reynolds has been linking to similar items since October 2009.
Mainstream media may finally be catching up. “The latest economic numbers have not been good,” David Leonhardt wrote in the May 26 New York Times. “Another report showed that economic growth at the start of the year was no faster than the Commerce Department initially reported — ‘a real surprise,’ said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics.”
Students at the Cooperative Nursery School of Ridgewood took to their tricycles on May 24th to help St. Jude’s. The children participated in the Trike a Thon to raise money for the research center. They got to help out a great cause, have fun and learn about riding safety. This is just one of the many fun events that children participate in while at the Co-op.
A nonsectarian school, The Co-op also offers morning and afternoon classes for 2, 3 and 4-year-olds, as well as Mommy & Me classes and Kindergarten enrichment. Setting the school apart from other nursery schools, The Co-op is organized and run by the parents. This enables parents to actively participate in their child’s early learning experience. Music, physical education, field trips, indoor and outdoor play time and an in-house library are just a few of the experiences to which the children are exposed as supplements to the daily education plans.
For more information on the school or to set up an appointment to visit, please call (201) 447-6232 or email the school at [email protected].
>New Jersey Choral Society Concert Benefits Center for Food Action
Experience the passion, spirituality, and richly diverse musical legacies of Antonin Dvorák and Leonard Bernstein as the New Jersey Choral Society presents “Legacy” on Friday, June 3 at 8:00 pm in Ridgewood’s West Side Presbyterian Church and on Saturday, June 4 at 8:00 pm in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Montclair. Under the direction of dynamic conductor Eric Dale Knapp, the New Jersey Choral Society concludes its 30th Anniversary Season with a reflective and uplifting program featuring Antonin Dvorák’s lyrical meditation Mass in D Major with its tuneful, folk-like melodies and Leonard Bernstein’s famous Chichester Psalms(Ridgewood performance only), a rhythmic, dramatic, yet fundamentally spiritual choral work of a number of Hebrew psalm texts. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ romantic and transcendentalToward the Unknown Region, based on the poetry of Walt Whitman, will conclude the program. Linda Sweetman-Waters will be featured on the organ. Solists for this event are Katie DeLavega, soprano, Alicia Luick, mezzo-soprano, Daniel Lynch Jr., tenor, Bruce Cain, bass, and Jake Lucas, boy soprano. Come one hour prior to concert times for The Inside Line, a complimentary lecture for all ticket holders. Hosted by the NJCS Board of Trustees (Emily Hewetson, President) and friends, the lecture will feature “A New Jersey Choral Society 30th Anniversary Retrospective: where we have been and the exciting future of NJCS.” In support of the Center for Food Action, the New Jersey Choral Society will be collecting nonperishable food items at each concert. Donated food items can be deposited in one of the receptacles in the lobby.
The Center for Food Action is a non-profit organization that provides emergency food, rental and utility assistance, counseling and advocacy for people in need. Advance tickets are $20.00 for general admission, $17.00 for students, seniors, and patrons with disabilities, and $12 for children 12 and under (Add $5.00 at the door). Season subscriptions and group discounts are available. The West Side Presbyterian Church and the Church of the Immaculate Conception are wheelchair accessible and large print and Braille programs are available with two weeks notice. For reservations or more information, call the New Jersey Choral Society at (201) 379-7719 or visithttps://www.njcs.org. Funding has been made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, through grant funds administered by the Bergen County Department of Parks, Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs.
The forecast for the summer driving season: Hit the road early. Not to beat the traffic, but to beat the higher gas prices expected in mid-July.
Goldman Sachs’ crystal ball is proclaiming that oil will soon soar to $135 a barrel, and likely have service stations jacking up fuel prices to $5 a gallon in New York just like the summer of 2008 that preceded the recession.
>Taxpayers’ Guide to Education Spending – May 2011 Introduction
The Taxpayers’ Guide to Education Spending (Taxpayers’ Guide) provides officials and the public the opportunity to view and compare all dollars spent on students for which public schools must provide services. Since previously reported per pupil costs did not include all expenditures, the Department has created a new variable that includes the total amount that is actually spent on students from preschool through grade 12.
The “Total Spending” calculation enhances the Budgetary Per Pupil Cost (formerly known as the Total Comparative Cost) by adding previously omitted categories of spending. Specifically, the Department added the following expenditures to arrive at the total spending number: transportation, special revenues, pension and benefits paid by the state, facilities (including debt service), equipment, total food services, judgments against the school district, and tuition/costs for students sent out of district (except payments to Charter schools). Consistent with the decision to include tuition for students sent out of district, the associated students are added to the enrollment denominator.
In addition to the new total spending measure, the Budgetary Per Pupil Cost Indicators are included to allow districts to review and compare various components of a school district’s annual budgeted data with other districts in the state through a series of “indicators” presenting costs on a per pupil basis. The Budgetary Per Pupil Cost is the amount that districts publish in their User-Friendly Budgets prior to the school election. It was formerly called the “Total Comparative Cost.” Unless otherwise noted in the indicator descriptions, districts are ranked from lowest to highest costs.
