Report: Principal Created ‘Suzy’ Facebook Page To Snoop On Students
May 7, 2012 7:53 AM
CLAYTON, Mo. (KMOX) – The principal at Clayton High School has resigned after stories surfaced claiming that she created a bogus Facebook account to spy on students.
The official reason given for Dr. Louise Losos’ resignation was a “fundamental dispute concerning the appropriate use of social media”.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Clayton students began getting friend requests from someone calling themselves “Suzy Harriston,” and many approved her without a second thought.
State’s junk food ban could take bite out of school fundraisers
By Laurel J. Sweet and Chris Cassidy
Monday, May 7, 2012 – Updated 1 minute ago
Bake sales, the calorie-laden standby cash-strapped classrooms, PTAs and booster clubs rely on, will be outlawed from public schools as of Aug. 1 as part of new no-nonsense nutrition standards, forcing fundraisers back to the blackboard to cook up alternative ways to raise money for kids.
At a minimum, the nosh clampdown targets so-called “competitive” foods — those sold or served during the school day in hallways, cafeterias, stores and vending machines outside the regular lunch program, including bake sales, holiday parties and treats dished out to reward academic achievement. But state officials are pushing schools to expand the ban 24/7 to include evening, weekend and community events such as banquets, door-to-door candy sales and football games.
Village Council Election: Which Candidates are Pro-Valley Expansion
Ridgewood voters need to decide which issues are most important to them and choose which candidates will address those issues the best. Here are your choices:
Hauck = Pro Valley Expansion
Pucciarelli = Pro Valley Expansion
Shinzouka = Anti Valley Expansion
Killion = Status Quo is Fine
Forenza = Pro Valley Expansion
Aronsohn = What ever is best for Aronsohn
Unfortunately if the issue that is most important to you is not addressed above, you are out of luck. Not one of these candidates has demonstrated any understanding of the fiscal challenges facing the Village. Not one has shown any ability to unify a very divided Village without selling out their own special interest group.
If Valley is your issue then your mind was made up a long time ago. Valley supporters need to realize that until Valley backs down or offers real compromise, the rest of the critical issues that confront the Village will go unattended to. Those opposed to the Valley expansion need to realize that the candidates that they endorse on this one issue may not have the skills to address the other issues that we face.
In the end, the real issue may be Valley itself. Valley is a business that gains nothing from enhancing the quality of life for Ridgewood residents. An overwhelmingly small percentage of Valley’s patients live in Ridgewood and an even smaller percentage work there. While your taxes are going up again this year by 7% Valley continues to pay no taxes to the Village. Shouldn’t the Village benefit more than it does from having Valley here? Might this be the biggest issue of them all?
Multiple Choirs Set for Annual Community Hymn Festival On Sunday, May 20, at 7:30 p.m., choirs from multiple Bergen County churches of all denominations will participate in the 23rd Annual Community Hymn Festival at Ridgewood’s West Side Presbyterian Church. The ecumenical event is open to the public.
Co-sponsored by the John R. Rodland Memorial Scholarship Fund and the Northern NJ Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, over $150,000 has been awarded in scholarships to future Church musicians. Rodland Scholarships are the largest such awards to Church Music majors in the nation, funded by a fall campaign and free-will offerings at the festival. This year’s winner of a $9,000 first prize is Christopher Gaza, a Masters of Music candidate at University of Oklahoma. Ganza will perform at the festival. “Songs, Hymns and Spiritual Songs through the Ages” is the theme of this year’s festival. Organists and choir directors from the various participating churches will direct or play for the over-80-voice choir, hand-bell choir, and brass ensemble. Great hymns of the Church, as well as anthems such as H. Parry’s I Was Glad When They Said Unto Me (sung at the Royal Wedding last fall), and V. Thompson’s My Shepherd Will Supply My Need will be featured. Singers are invited to join the chorus at the only rehearsal on Tuesday, May 15 at 7:30 p.m. Music will be provided. The church is at 6 S. Monroe St., corner of W. Ridgewood Ave.
It is an absolute truth that Paul Aonsohn told residents to vote for him and not for Gwen and Al. People have been talking about bullet voting for Killion and Shinozuka he said ” you can vote for me and not Gwen and Al”. This happened right after his pathetic debate endorsement of Hauck and Puciarelli. Before anyone even left the room. Paul knows many people have been talking about bullet voting and he is making every attempt at damage control.
So he told people they could also choose to vote for him, keith and Jane. Aronsohn is playing both sides of this and people are seeing what he really is. Hopefully the election tomorrow will result in a farewell to this two-faced, backstabbing, bully and liar who has misrepresented everything he has done or failed to do as a councilman for four years.
How dare he walk around and talk about his support for the library when he rarely to never even bothered to attend meetings!
How dare Aronsohn talk about revitalizing downtown! Where has he been for four years? Hasn’t he been the council liaison to Chamber?
How he dare he attack another candidate for supposedly being “dissed” over a polite email exchange. How old is Paul Aronsohn? What is he a 13-year-old girl? Yes, Jane teaches CCD with Marie Aronshohn. So while the ladies are teaching the commandments “thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor”, Aronsohn is doing just that with his disgusting and disgraceful lies. What a jerk.
Now the bitter frosting on the vitriolic cake: How dare Aronsohn compromise the Jamboree Scholarship Foundation to advance his candidacy? He used the Jamoboree (social) email list to advance his candidacy and many people are disgusted. Paul Aronsohn is a disgrace and should never be permitted to sit with our fine elected officials again. Please bullet for Killion and Shinizouka.
As a lifelong resident of Ridgewood, I find it sad that there is a new era of “partisan politics” in our midst. This Village Council election should be about serving the residents and taxpayers of Ridgewood not about how to “seize control” of the Council. My observation from the sidelines has been that those who step up to serve do so with the best intentions, usually at much personal sacrifice. They give their service and move on back into private life. I find this new era of outside money and paid for shills on street corners in tee shirts quite disturbing. We are bombarded daily with disgusting political maneuvering at the national level and now it seems it has crept its way into our Village.
I have carefully listened and observed the tactics, the words and the actions of those who are running for Village Council. Once you clear away the smoke, both Keith and Jane appear to stand alone for all of the right reasons. Ridgewood has seen the effects of a partisan Mayor who dreamed of a Freeholder position. That wreckage took years to recover from. I urge you to not let history repeat itself. Vote for Keith and Jane tomorrow so we may protect the future of Ridgewood from the nasty ways of party politics.
N.J. Superior Court judges beware: Gov. Christie may be going after you
Gov. Chris Christie is expected to dump several state Superior Court judges in the coming weeks as the battle over judicial appointments heats up again.
Last week at a town hall meeting, Christie said he’s fed up with the judiciary, which he views as too activist.
“So I’m being much more discriminating about who I renominate. They have bills in to rubber stamp automatically. I’m not doing that. You’re going to be seeing me do less of that in the coming weeks,” Christie told the audience in Garfield. “I’m doing this because I’m at wit’s end about how to change this bench in the state.” (Spoto, The Star-Ledger)
Christie reaches agreement with largest public workers union
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and the state’s largest union announced a tentative four-year contract agreement that increases pay, reduces clothing allowances and recognizes a new law raising workers’ benefit costs.
Specifics of the tentative deal will be released next week by the administration and the Communications Workers of America, Christie said in a statement today. The union represents more than 35,000 state employees. (Servetah, Bloomberg)
Ridgewood blog endorse Keith Killion and Jane Shinozuka for Ridgewood Village Council
PJ Blogger and the staff of the Ridgewood blog
May 7, 2012
( Ridgewood, NJ ) This election pits the forces of destructive “urbanization” against those who wish Ridgewood to remain “a Village” embracing all the reasons and values people move to the Village of Ridgewood to begin with. Whether it be the enormous Valley hospital expansion or the construction of more tax payer funded “monstrosities” like the Village Hall . “Citizens for a Better Ridgewood ” and people of that ilk represent nothing more than a group looking to make large sums of money financed by the tax payer bringing with them all the ills of over development and the huge debt burden that would accompany it.
The Villages character would be lost forever as standards and quality of life would continue to suffer decline. The disappointing and discouraging part of this election given how long each candidate has lived in Ridgewood , is how few of the candidates seem to really grasp and appreciate the value “the Village” brings . Whether its is personal political ambition or a hidden agenda driven politics of urbanization the “value of “the Village ” is under attack and seems to be over looked and written off by almost everyone .
People come to the Village of Ridgewood for the insulated and protected environment that offers the best of everything. An easy commute to the city , a top notch schools system with very high standards , plenty of grass fields, loads of recreational activities , opportunities for worship and a vital down town all make the Village a very special place . A place where young people can be free to grow up and experiment in a safe environment. The Village is all about class and understatement and very high expectations fall on everyone. Whether you are a CEO of a fortune 500 company or making local pizza delivers Ridgewood expects more. The Village of Ridgewood is not Newark or Paterson.nor is it meant to be nor will it ever be.
We do have one candidate who does understand how special the Village is and looks to balance fiscal responsibility with the new realities of the current economic environment rectifying years of fiscal mismanagement that has been the hall mark of the the Village sine the late 1990’s ; the Mayor Keith Killion . This was so clearly demonstrated during the long and arduous Valley Expansion hearings where Keith led the Village Council through some tough and comprehensive testimony leading to a unambitious decision by the Village council. . Keith is all Ridgewood born and bred and sees the Village as his home . he is not here looking to make a buck and move on. He also has the experience and long term prospective that make him able to lead “the Village” like no other .
Along with Kieth we like Jane Shinozuka ,even though she does not have that much experience she has been steadfastly opposed to the Valley Expansion which is the single most daunting challenge facing the Village. It also helps that she comes from an area in town that seems to often be over looked ,the Glen School area . This gives Jane a unique prospective given the disturbing trend that ,many would gladly sell out or have sold out parts of the Village in order to protect their own little enclave and curry special favor .
At the is time the Ridgewood blog endorse Keith Killion and Jane Shinozuka for Ridgewood Village Council, to fill two of the three open seats to be decided on May 8th 2012.
N.J. court says cap on school administrators’ sick pay valid
The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that regulations limiting the amount of back sick pay that public school superintendents can collect are valid, reversing a lower court’s decision.
Arianna Huffington’s wings clipped at AOL
Published May 04, 2012
FoxNews.com
The good news for Arianna Huffington is that she gets to keep her share of the $315 million that AOL shelled out for her website. The bad news is her duties as editrix of the once-mighty Web conglomerate are being scaled back.
Way back.
When AOL boss Tim Armstrong announced he was adding the Huffington Post to the company’s stable of websites, he crowned the liberal doyenne editor of all properties, including TechCrunch, Patch.com, MovieFone and MapQuest. That announcement rubbed several longtime company journalists the wrong way, as Huffington has never been known for her diplomatic skills.
Aronsohn : No Real Friend of the Ridgewood Public Library
Regarding Mr. Aronsohn’s call to fully fund the library from next year’s budget, he hardly ever attended the library board meetings as liaison from the council (maybe 4 times in 2 years). He made his required committee reports during council meetings only a couple of times in that period.
Now, with the election looming, he wants to be the library’s hero when he could have been working for them all along.
Idea: why not check out a book on accessibility?
Seriously, how hard is it to tell people you support the library and accessibility for the handicapped? Who doesn’t?? But Paul’s also claiming fiscal responsibility. Infrastructure and shade tree maintenance aren’t as sexy, but they both require the VC attention and money. The big problem is they don’t have deep-pocketed supporters that can vote for you. Take your special interest politics, Paul, out of Ridgewood and back to Washington
As countless novels, plays, poems, and films–not to mention actual history–have attempted to teach us, ambition alone is not enough.
Mr. Aronsohn has treated us like dopes who won’t notice that he is both for and against the Valley expansion. He believes we’ll applaud him as a heroic promoter of accessibility but not recognize that he does no research and gives no thought to how it will be accomplished as long as his picture can be in the paper. Grants from the county, state, and federal government are NOT “free”–we all pay for them. Isn’t the waste of money one of his complaints?
On Wednesday morning he can finally go to work and finally spend some time there because after June 30 his Wednesday evenings will be free.
Newcomers can only say what they WOULD do if elected. Incumbents ought to be able to say what they DID
Harshly and repeatedly criticizing one’s colleagues is not a convincing platform for reelection. Standard advice to job seekers is NOT to trash their former employers and co-workers because it would reflect badly on themselves and is hardly a strong argument for being hired. That should work here as well. Dirty politics has no place in a suburban council election.
The tax increase prematurely quoted in the press is very far from final. It was merely a first look at the budget. Many residents don’t realize that it would apply only to the small municipal government portion of the budget, which is mostly a blank check to the schools. They are mentally multiplying the number by their existing property taxes and panicking.
Raises: Aronsohn has voted for every police and fire union contract in the past 4 years. Employee contracts (not counting the current Village Manager’s) were approved by the former Council. Four reasonable council members voted for the village manager’s raise. Disagree? OK. But is their decision to give somebody a raise really a good enough reason to vote for somebody else? It was one thing, blasted out of proportion by Aronsohn when he (or White Horse Strategies) grabbed it as a key to reelection…because he has very little else to offer.
Besides the fact that a 0%-based budget is better as a soundbite than as a plan for municipal government, how can Aronsohn reduce taxes or keep them low, as he claims he will do, while fully funding the library, revitalizing downtown, and pressing for enormous so-called accessibility projects when more thought could have had the job done better and at far lower cost?
Take a look at the new sidewalk at the Stable. Who planned it–the designer of Candyland? Or maybe Chutes and Ladders. It takes you (that is, apparently everyone) up from the parking lot, turn left, turn right, turn left, go to the Maple Avenue regular sidewalk, then up to the door–it couldn’t be more circuitous, with hard 90-degree turns rather than rounded edges. The turn radius at each corner, and there are many, is sharp and not easily maneuvered.
Yes, a very gentle specific maximum slope is required for wheelchairs; on hills, that requires a twisty-turny path. But accessibility to a building is supposed to give everybody a fair shot at getting through the door, not make things harder for everybody else every day. Did a single accessibility engineer review the plans? Unless another path will be added, and it doesn’t look that way, people attending meetings at the Stable (there are many) will have to leave home 5 minutes earlier–no exaggeration–just to get from the parking lot to the main door.
That trip is entirely exposed to the elements, too. When it’s raining or snowing or windy, this will be a long, wet, cold trip for all. And it will have to be cleared routinely of ice, snow, and debris in order for ANYONE to get in.
People in wheelchairs are not the only population needing better access. Those with Parkinson’s, a cane, a walker, crutches, a small child in tow, etc.–far greater numbers–will be exhausted. It can be difficult, but it’s not impossible, to accommodate all, and that’s what it’s all about. Why didn’t Aronsohn find and consult an expert? These projects require care and expertise. But no–just having the concrete poured is good enough for Paul Aronsohn, and now, 6 figures later, we are stuck with it.
The last thing we need here are the kind of divisive politics Aronsohn practices
The last thing we need here are the kind of divisive politics Aronsohn practices. We have way more than enough problems here already.
I want to keep the things that made the Village what it is – which is what made many people want to live here. And I feel the best way to do that is to vote for Killion and Shinozuka of the current candidates.
Aronsohn I do not trust at all — he says rescind the H zone amendments, but then endorses others who are for the Valley plan which would require keeping those amendments. He’s a politician and just wants to use Ridgewood to advance his real agenda — himself.
We need to stop all the adventures and focus on the basics. We currently have an unsustainable model here – unless you can afford your taxes skyrocketing by big percentages every year. I sure can’t.
Aronsohn’s biggest supporters are those who want more government spending, more taxes, more overhead and bureaucracy. Don’t be fooled into thinking anything else by all the hype and spin being put out.
Local government here needs to be about stewardship and not about grandstanding and politics.
This election has become so nasty because Mr. Aronsohn has decided to use all the big-time political techniques he and his team can muster – spin, divide and conquer, obfuscation, confrontation, attack, flip-flop, and all the rest.
We’ve all seen the results of a lot of politics being applied here currently. Just look at the whole situation about Valley in recent times to see the very same techniques being used to try and manipulate things. Has any of that junk made things better here? I would say quite the opposite.
We don’t need more of that here — nor in my view do we need more of Mr. Aronsohn.
