Category: Ridgewood Schools

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Ridgewood Board of Education Needs New Blood

RHS BEST theridgewoodblog.net 11

April 10,2018

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, the Ridgewood BOE seats in recent years have come up for re-election unopposed. While many have asserted that the Ridgewood Board of Education does its best to keep the public off the board and is only looking for more yes-men or yes-women.  With the Ridgewood School system in what appears to be rapid decline , an over zealous budget and huge tax increases on the horizon a call to action would seem necessary to preserve both the quality of life in the Village and property values.

Board seats are  three year terms and are up for re-election in the following order :

Mr. B. Vincent Loncto, President
[email protected]

Term Ends November 2018

Mr. James Morgan, Vice President
[email protected]

Term Ends November 2019

Ms. Jennie Smith Wilson
[email protected]​

Term Ends November 2019

Ms. Christina Krauss
[email protected] 

Term Ends November 2020

Ms. Sheila Brogan
[email protected]

Term Ends November 2020

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$110 Million Dollar Ridgewood School Budget Presentation at Benjamin Franklin Middle School Auditorium April 16th

cottageplaceBOE_theridgewoodblog

April 9,2018

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Benjamin Franklin Middle School Auditorium will host the next addition of the 2018-19 preliminary budget presentation, with final vote by the Board of Education on May 7. Public presentations are set for April 16 and May 7.Click here to view the 2018-2019 Preliminary Budget presentation, given at the March 20 Board of Education meeting.  https://www.ridgewood.k12.nj.us/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=13032001

Regular Public Meeting for the Ridgewood Board of Education will be May 7 2018 7:30 PM to 10:00 PM ,Board Room, 3rd Floor, Education Center.

 

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Reader says “the Bell Schedule”will change to accommodate the flood of incoming students

RHS

Anybody wondering why “the Bell Schedule” will change next year at the high school?
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To support the incoming flood of new students over the next 10 years.
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But don’t worry, they will be able to park their cars in the Ginormous eyesore of a Garage.
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Good luck living in the urban utopia formerly known as Ridgewood…

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Reader says The old saw that the SAT is a test that you can’t study for is still that: an old, false saw

standardized-testing

The old saw that the SAT is a test that you can’t study for is still that: an old, false saw. Perfect or near perfect scores were once a rarity, perhaps because students were (wrongly, as it turns out) warded away from preparing in a focused, methodical way. Now, however, admissions offices at the nation’s top-rated colleges are swimming in applications from students sporting such gaudy scores. Fully a quarter or more of freshmen matriculating at places like Yale or Princeton totally body-slammed the SAT. Hence, schools who informally market themselves the “Harvard of the South” or similar monikers that identify them as non-Ivy League, but striving for recognition and a healthy share of the rest of the best students, are competing heavily for students with those kinds of obscenely high scores by offering large merit-based scholarships. But, and this is a big but, those same schools are prone very quickly to lose interest in students who do not score perfectly or near-perfectly on the SAT. Respect for the SAT as a tool for admissions offices to make fine distinctions between and among good students has plummetted. Many detractors of the SAT see it merely as a narrowly-focused test of a certain raw academic-related skills, perhaps predictive of first year college performance, but of no real value beyond that. The ACT, by contrast, has a much different format. The ACT is broken down by subject matter and gives admissions offices a good idea how much of the pure substance of a given academic subject a student has ingested and comprehended. The ACT’s popularity among college-bound high school students is increasing as more and more people recognize the real weaknesses of the SAT.

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Reader says When the new apartments open, our schools are going to be overwhelmed with new students

high density housing Ridgewood

One family makes $50,000 or less and one family makes well over $300,000. The average of that is really quite high. So, don’t brag about all the millionaires who live here. Even a mean would be slanted to the higher end. Many of our residents live in small apartments so they can send their children to Ridgewood schools. They can’t afford that nice cheap $400,000 home. When the new apartments open, our schools are going to be overwhelmed with new students. So, yes, many of our teachers are paid much more than many of our residents. Even at starting salaries because they are getting thousands of dollars in free benefits that even our millionaires might find it tough to meet. Don’t forget, the salaries are not based on 12 months of education. Many teachers make a lot at their “summer jobs”. Ridgewood is fortunate to have very talented teachers who do inspire their students but we have almost as many who are sick of teaching and are just counting down to their very well padded retirements.

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RHS Junior New Players summer program

Junior Company Poster 2018

April 6,2018

Morgan Knight

Good afternoon, Ridgewood families! I’m the staff supervisor for the RHS Junior New Players summer program. If your child is interested in theater — or just wants an inclusive place to call home this summer — please consider signing them up for Junior New Players! We are open to district students who have completed grades 4 and up! No previous stage experience is required!

This three week workshop is facilitated by advanced RHS students (under the direction and supervision of adult staff) and culminates in performances on the RHS Little Theater stage. Junior Co. (approaching its 25th year) is special and unique to our district. As a Junior Co. alum, I can attest to some very happy memories and close friendships being made here. The performances are great fun but, more importantly, our J-Co. kids learn life skills like public speaking, teamwork, time management, and self-confidence; our high school students make for positive role-models and mentors.

For additional information and registration, see the attached file, or visit our website at rhsnewplayers.com

Feel free to send me a personal message, or email me at [email protected] with any questions about our program!

The RHS New Players Company is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization; donations are tax deductible.

Junior New Players Registration Form and Information.doc
Document
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Reader suggests some Ridgewood BOE members are out of touch

BOE

Completely tone deaf and out of touch with reality – Loncto and Fishbein wouldn’t even respond to a resident’s honest concern about these windows and their cost, just saying “We need them now”. Well maybe these out of touch redecorated aren’t up to the jobs they have, time to resign because we don’t need them now.

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Reader says The SAT definitely has been dumbed down on the verbal side over the years

o-STANDARDIZED-TESTS-facebook

The SAT definitely has been dumbed down on the verbal side over the years (e.g., 1. hard vocabulary words have been eliminated, 2. analogy questions have been eliminated, 3. more context is now being given in the text of the text itself to allow the test-takers to figure out on the fly what hard or unfamiliar words mean, etc.). As a result, many students can score much higher on the verbal SAT than in years past without having worked hard over the years (or even in the months prior to the SAT test administration) to attain and maintain an excellent vocabulary. So those students with top vocabularies are finding this is not as much an advantage to them as it was for SAT test-takers two or three decades ago (i.e., less proficient students are readily getting the same or close to the same scores as they are getting). It doesn’t appear, however, that this is the case on the math SAT sections. The math SAT is still very challenging. Perhaps many of the Ridgewood High School students benefiting the most from SAT tutoring are making up for not working as hard as they should have in math from grade 6 or 7 onward, or for having had teachers or lower level classes during those grades that didn’t challenge them or that didn’t prepare them adequately to score very well on the math sections of the SAT.

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Reader recounts bad experience at a Back to School Night

Tradition_of_excellence_theridgewoodblog

Years ago at Back to School night we were greeted by a teacher who was only concerned that the parents hand over money for a workbook the students needed. When someone questioned what she was teaching, her answer floored me. “I don’t have to worry about my teaching and I could not teach at all and it would be legal. I have tenure and I’m really not interested in bonus money so I’m just going to sit and do nothing until I retire.” And she did. Daily assignments to that workbook to be done in class was just about all she accomplished. This, incidentally, was the required second year of a language class in which they learned nearly nothing. The most horrible thing about this story from years ago is that some teachers in the system still feel that way and nothing has been done about it.

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Reader says teachers’ union protects incompetence with tenure

Ridgewood EA teachers protest

Our rankings might improve if we fired a bunch of these entitled thugs and replaced them with educators interested in working with our kids. But we can’t because the teachers’ union protects incompetence with tenure. All they’re doing is trying to get more wages & benefits for their members. They have no interest in preparing our children for the workplace of tomorrow. Let’s try and get some younger teachers willing to raise their “give a crap” level than the current bunch of lazy thugs we’ve got.

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Ridgewood School Rankings ,the Good ,the Bad and the Ugly

tradition of excellence

US NEWS STATE of NJ RANK:
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Eleven (not even the TOP 11 BTW) of the top 25 on the list are magnet or Vocational schools (which is not “more than half the top 25” but I guess math is hard for you)
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Also these PUBLIC (non-magnet) Schools are ranked AHEAD of Ridgewood:
#5 – Elizabeth High School
#6 – Princeton High School
#7 – Chatham High School
#10 West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North
#11 – Livingston High School
#12 – Summit Senior High School
#13 – Millburn High School
#14 – Glen Ridge High School
#15 – Ridge High School, Basking Ridge
#18 – West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South
#19 – Mountain Lakes High School
#20 – Tenafly High School
#23 – Northern Highlands Regional High School
#25 – Montgomery High School
#26 – Ridgewood High School
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US NEWS NATIONAL RANK:
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RIDGEWOOD IS RANKED #583 (almost below 600) in NATIONAL Rank
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US NEWS COLLEGE READINESS (arguably the most important ranking)
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RIDGEWOOD HAS A 53.6% COLLEGE READINESS rating (barely half of the students graduate as ready for college).
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STATE OF NJ’s OWN SCHOOL RANKINGS
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You are also ignoring that THE STATE OF NJ ranked Ridgewood High School as 83 out of the 385 NJ high schools.
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Neighboring Glen Rock was ranked #13
(the top twelve on the NJ State list are specialized “academies” and vocational schools which have academic standards for acceptance)
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Here’s some other (local) schools that are ranked higher than Ridgewood:
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#20 – Pascack Hills (Pascack Valley)
#25 – Northern Valley – Demarest
#28 – Tenafly
#29 – Mahwah
#45 – Northern Valley – Old Tappan
#46 – Pascack Valley
#48 – River Dell
#52 – Indian Hills
#55 – Emerson
#56 – Fair Lawn
#60 – Northern Highlands
#61 – Fort Lee
#72 – Waldwick
#73 – New Milford
#76 – Bergenfield
#82 – Ramapo
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Then Ridgewood at #83
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But at least we beat out Dumont (ranked #84)
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No Matter how you look at the data, it IS NOT good news for Ridgewood.
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Stellar SAT scores among Ridgewood High School students a Function of private SAT tutoring?

standardized-testing

‎

April 4,2018

by Anne LaGrange Loving on Facebook ‎

Ridgewood NJ, Tonight during the Budget presentation, Dr. Fishbien spoke about the stellar SAT scores among Ridgewood High School students. When asked how many families pay for private SAT tutoring, he replied that about 40% of parents responded to a survey, and of those about 40% self-reported that they paid for private SAT prep for their children. I think that number is likely quite a lot higher. It seemed like everyone I knew (in the late 1990’s) was paying for Kaplan or Huntington or some private individual to help improve SAT scores. Depending on how high the numbers actually are, this could mean that the stellar SAT scores are more a reflection of wealth (or the decision to allocate funds toward this effort) than it is a reflection of the Ridgewood High School preparation of students for this standardized exam. Just wondering whether my thoughts on this are off base.

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Reader says Ridgewood’s quality is declining by a huge amount while the teachers who are apparently not teaching get higher annual raises

REA, ridgewoood teachers

At this time, many of our teachers and other public workers are paid more than many of the residents who pay them. The long term teachers are in the high middle class and lower upper class, and are above the pay grade of many of the residents that pay them. When you add in the benefits and pension, the majority are well above the average Ridgewood residents. We all know that a certain percentage of our residents are “rolling in it” and receive some of the highest pay in the nation. We also know that the teachers, when striking, seem to be demanding to be in the pay range of these really highly paid individuals. We also know that the benefits and pensions that our teachers receive put them at such a high total income level that many of our residents only dream of obtaining. Many of our residents are also business owners or in business for themselves. These people have to pay even more for their employees insurance and the employees pay between 20-25% of that while having high co-pays and deductibles. A $10.00 co-pay is a joke in the real world. To top it off, Ridgewood’s quality is declining by a huge amount while the teachers who are apparently not teaching get higher annual raises. Many residents have not seen a raise or bonus in years. We really can’t cry for the “poor teachers”.

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Ridgewood Schools Break Top 50 Substance Abuse Cases Reported

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April 4,2018
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Drugs and alcohol continue to be a pervasive problem in New Jersey’s cities as well as suburban areas. The New Jersey Department of Education released its most recent data of substance abuse cases reported by each school district . In the current list of the school districts cases in 2016-17, Ridgewood Schools broke the top 50 coming in 3rd in Bergen county and 49th over all with 17 reported cases , trailing only Englewood with 19 and tying Ridgewood field park with 17.

The state Department of Education has cautioned that these numbers are reported by each district, each jurisdiction is self reporting and is responsible and required by law for reporting its results fairly and accurately.

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Public presentation for the 2018-2019 Ridgewood School $110 Million Budget will be given at 7 p.m. , April 3 at George Washington Middle School Auditorium

ridgewood schools

2018-2019 budget information

April 3,2018

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, The Board of Education has approved the preliminary 2018-2019 school budget. Public presentations will be given at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 3 at George Washington Middle School Auditorium and on Monday, April 16 at Benjamin Franklin Middle School Auditorium.

Click here to view the 2018-2019 Preliminary Budget presentation, given at the March 20 Board of Education meeting.https://www.ridgewood.k12.nj.us/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=13032001