MAY 21, 2015, 11:46 AM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2015, 7:26 PM
BY HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Students will spend less time taking standardized tests next year in New Jersey and 10 other states, a response to complaints from teachers, parents and school officials that the exams took up too much instruction time and overwhelmed local schools.
The governing board of the tests, called PARCC, voted to cut down total testing time by about 90 minutes, the officials said in a statement released Thursday.
“The changes will improve and simplify test administration for schools, teachers and students, without diminishing the goal of the assessment,” the statement said.
Locally, testing critics said that, while they were glad state officials were responding to their concerns, the changes do not go far enough. Too much time still will be spent preparing for the tests, they said, because of the high stakes attached to them. The results are used to evaluate the performance of teachers, administrators and schools and will become a graduation requirement in 2019
Ridgewood NJ, The event will open to the public on Thursday, May 21 at 7 p.m. in the Campus Center at RHS with music and dance performances. Sharing the Arts will perform A Whole New World from Aladdin, and the advanced dance class will perform to a piece played by the Symphonic Band. Guests will have an opportunity to explore the artwork and displays throughout the first floor before moving to the Little Theatre for a concert of small ensembles.
On Friday, the festivities will continue as high school staff, faculty, and students are immersed in over 1000 pieces of artwork. They may also attend various performances and demonstrations throughout the day. This two-day extravaganza is truly one of the feature events of the Fine and Applied Arts Department.
Thursday evening’s gala is open to the public and free of charge.
MAY 19, 2015 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2015, 10:00 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Ridgewood Board of Education members voted at a May 4 meeting to keep a treasurer of school monies on the district’s books and leave the post open until a qualified candidate is hired.
The position comes with a 2015-16 pay rate of $5,000, a salary amount that remains unchanged from the current year.
The board’s decision, settled by a 4-1 vote, comes on the heels of a recent financial supervision breakdown that essentially led to the theft of nearly $1 million in parking meter coins from the Village of Ridgewood.
“We’re all mindful that our village suffered an incident … we all want to have proper oversight,” said BOE Vice President Vince Loncto.
Parents and kids brought plenty of passion — pro and con — to this morning’s debate over PARCC legislation.
“Never once did they come home and say, ‘Mommy, it was so hard! Mommy, I didn’t get it!’ They said, ‘Mommy, I rocked that!’ They were so proud of themselves,” said North Star Academy parent Florisha Johnson. (Flanagan/NJTV)
Ridgewood NJ, The RHS History Bowl A Team finished ninth out of 150 teams in Arlington, VA at the national championship competition. Additionally, the team of Ben Bechtold and Thomas Cleary finished in the quarter finals of the competition. Other team members with media permission to be listed are Kumal Raza, Regina Park, Minha An, Thria Bernabe, Tristan Kane and Peter Goodman.
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood High School is ranked 15th within New Jersey. Students have the opportunity to take Advanced Placement® course work and exams. The AP® participation rate at Ridgewood High School is 68 percent. The student body makeup is 51 percent male and 49 percent female, and the total minority enrollment is 30 percent. Ridgewood High School is the only high school in the Ridgewood Public Schools.
Rankings / Awards
This details how this school compares with others based on U.S. News ranking criteria.
Medal Awarded Gold
National Rank
#307
State Rank
#15
STEM Rank
#222
Students / Teachers
These counts and percentages of students and teachers are from data reported by schools to the government.
Total Enrollment 1,694
Total Minority Enrollment (% of total) 30%
Total Economically Disadvantaged (% of total) 1%
Full-Time Teachers 132
More About Student Body
Test Scores
U.S. News calculates these values based on student performance on state exit exams and internationally available exams on college-level course work (AP®/IB exams).
Proficient in Language 98%
Proficient in Mathematics 96%
College Readiness Index 60.4
MAY 11, 2015 LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015, 12:24 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Ridgewood district administrators informally assessed enrollment numbers of the village’s six elementary schools since 2009, a response to the public’s mounting concerns over anticipated class sizes next year.
In its search for a trend, the administration determined that a definitive conclusion could not be identified.
What the research did do, however, was provide a baseline for the district as it continues to monitor overall enrollment heading into the next academic year.
Board of Education (BOE) members said for the past several weeks that they have engaged in numerous conversations and fielded emails from parents alarmed with increasing class sizes. Two dozen parents publicly expressed related concerns at a school board meeting last month.
Those speakers, most with children attending Willard and Hawes schools, noted that high enrollment in the lower grades is adversely impacting the educational environment for the students. The rising student-to-teacher ratio also places a burden on the staff, parents contend.
MAY 11, 2015 LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015, 9:50 AM
BY MARK KRULISH
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
The issue of sidewalks, and lack thereof, on Clinton Avenue returned to the Ridgewood Council on May 6 as residents came forward to voice their opinion on that issue, as well as the safety concerns held by parents whose children walk to Ridge School.
In February, the council approved a resolution for Clinton Avenue improvements, which included paving, but not installation of sidewalks as recommended by the Citizen Safety Advisory Committee (CSAC).
Councilwoman Susan Knudsen said the topic was put on for discussion at last Wednesday’s work session for residents who believed they were not a part of the process because they were not aware of when CSAC was discussing Clinton Avenue.
Many of those who did come forward last week noted that the lack of sidewalks on Clinton, as well as other nearby streets, is part of a larger safety issue surrounding Ridge School.
Anastasia Bamberg, who lives on Melrose Place, said the village is missing an opportunity to install sidewalks, but believes the street should remain closed to traffic during the day.
“I think Clinton Avenue is a great example of closing the street and I’d like to close more streets in Ridgewood to get kids to school and not have as much traffic,” she said. “I understand that the residents object to sidewalks, but I think they’re objecting because they think it will be opened to traffic.”
MAY 7, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2015, 4:22 PM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Some say the best educators shy away from individual accolades; they choose instead to spotlight the successes of their students.
Fortunately for the village, they couldn’t escape the attention Tuesday night.
Continuing the tradition that began in 1988, the 10 recipients of this year’s Ridgewood Teacher Recognition Awards were showered with bouquets of praise, seemingly endless lists of acknowledgements, compliments and tributes, during ceremonies inside the standing-room only Education Center.
“In reading through the nomination forms,” said Board of Education President Sheila Brogan, “I was struck by the adjectives that were used to describe them: approachable, kind-hearted, enthusiastic, motivated, knowledgeable, talented, energetic, change agent, professional.”
This year’s honorees are Paul Cronk, Hawes School; Ellen Wolff, Orchard; Nicole Blatt, Ridge; Samantha Stankiewicz, Somerville; Amanda Zampolino, Travell; Paul Wyka, Willard; Amber Nizza, Benjamin Franklin; Janelle King, George Washington; Nancy Reilly, Ridgewood High School; and Susan Fink, Educational Services.
Ridgewood NJ, Superintendent Dr. Daniel Fishbein has won a New Jersey Press Association award for his monthly columns in The Ridgewood News. Dr. Fishbein won Second Place in the category of column writing for a weekly newspaper in the organization’s annual Better Newspaper Contest 2014. The winning columns were Schools Cannot Do It Alone and Taking the Mask Off Addiction.The columns were submitted by Edward Virgin, Editor, The Ridgewood News, as part of its package of contest entries encompassing a variety of reporting categories. Ed accepted the award for Dr. Fishbein at the organization’s annual Press Night on April 23 .
MAY 8, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2015, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
There’s good reason to opt out
To the editor:
On April 2, all district parents received from our Superintendent of Schools a status update on the first round of Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) testing.
The letter tallies the students whose parents refused the PARCC tests (opting out is not technically an option): 1,135 out of a total of 4,111 students, or nearly 28 percent. The refusal rate for grades 3-8 was over 11 percent.
In line with NJ Education Commissioner David Hespe’s recent threats, the letter states that Ridgewood Public Schools may suffer ill effects as a result, including losing federal grant money and losing our status as a high-performing school district.
The letter does not mention that no district has ever lost federal grant money as a result of low participation, nor does it question why a brand-new assessment should carry such weight in terms of evaluating our district’s schools.
I, along with no doubt all Ridgewood residents who are shouldering 95 percent of the $101 million school budget via property taxes, wish to maintain Ridgewood’s status as a high-performing district. I do not think that the way to do this is to sit by as corporate-led reform, the stated goal of which was to create a “national uniform market” for standardized tests and prep materials, attempts to convert our public schools into profitable test factories without corresponding benefit to students.
We’ve always had standardized tests. However, the low-stakes, sporadic CAT and Terra Nova tests took up a fraction of instruction time as compared to the high stakes, annual standardized testing that began in 2001 with NJ ASK under NCLB.
PARCC and PARCC test prep take excessive standardized testing to a new level.
Further, like other standardized test results, PARCC scores will not tell teachers what they don’t already know. The delay in receiving them exacerbates this: Results from the March testing won’t be out until October 2015 at the earliest. Relying on such data for student placement or special needs or anything else seems more than a bit delayed.
The bottom line is, as Dr. Fishbein stated in an op-ed piece last summer, ever-increasing state mandates including PARCC are objectionable because they displace instruction time and shunt teachers into offices and behind desks to fill out reports and pore over data.
Many parents agree and are acting, in a lawful and respectful way, to try to roll back the intrusion of corporate “reformers” and politicians under their influence in the classroom.
I understand that Commissioner Hespe has directed administrators to encourage participation in PARCC. The Department will view such attempts as a “mitigating factor” in how districts with high non-participation rates are evaluated, as Commissioner Hespe stated at an April 29 hearing in Trenton.
At the same hearing, the Commissioner claimed not to understand why parents are refusing permission. Rather than merely carrying out the Commissioner’s directives, our administration would serve us well by helping to explain that to him and the Department publicly.
Ridgewood NJ, School taxes in the village are about to go up by more than 2 percent cap put in to effect , by Governor Christie in 2010. The cap limits increases in property taxes to 2 percent. There are several ways to get exceptions,which were pushed by Democratic lawmakers negotiating with Christie , who at the time pushed for a hard cap know on this blog as the 2 percent solution .
Towns, county governments and school boards in New Jersey can exceed the tax-hike limit for spending on debt payments, public employee benefits and response to disasters. The cap also doesn’t include many special fees that some towns levy for services such as trash removal .
Last week, the BOE adopted the district’s massive $101.2 million budget for the coming school year. According to the Bergen Record the new budget would will raise taxes over the next year by $194.65 on the average village home assessed at $690,662.That increase represents a more than 2-percent increase from last year’s tax.(https://www.northjersey.com/news/ridgewood-school-taxes-to-increase-more-than-2-percent-1.1326603 ) Click here to view the latest presentation on next year’s school budget, given at the April 27, 2015 Board of Education meeting.
Residents are reminded of the invitation to stop by for coffee and casual conversation with Board of Education members and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Daniel Fishbein on Wednesday, May 13 from 7-8:30 p.m. at the Education Center, 49 Cottage Place. All residents are invited to drop in to share their thoughts, questions, suggestions and concerns .
Also district parents and guardians have the opportunity to provide anonymous feedback to the Board of Education through the 2014-2015 satisfaction survey. The survey period runs from Tuesday, May 5 through Friday, May 15. All district parents and guardians with email addresses on file will receive an email link to the survey.
You would think he would be all over this discussion with his crying and complaints about Teachers pay, benefits and pensions.
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Where is his vitriolic claim that the “Union Thugs” in the NJEA are destroying the state? Why have we not seen his post on this discussion that because of the NJEA Union Thugs businesses are leaving the N.J. and so are residents!
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And how many times did we hear “N.J. Has the highest Property Taxes in the Country” because of the Public Safety wages and benefits, and lets not forget pensions? Shouldn’t he be here making the same claim about the BOE budget?
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I will tell you why we hear crickets and nothing from him on this discussion, he doesn’t care about the BOE budget. That isn’t important to him. What is important to him is vilifying Public Safety employees, specifically Police and Firefighters. That’s what he is all about, nothing less and nothing more.
The Ridgewood Board of Education adopted its $101.2 million budget, a plan that calls for an average school tax increase of $194.65.
MAY 5, 2015 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2015, 10:13 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
The Board of Education unanimously approved the district’s $101.2 million budget last week, adopting a financial proposal that supports a new administrator hire, technology updates and curriculum enhancements.
The district’s spending plan will increase school taxes by $194.65 for the average Ridgewood home assessed at $690,662. The rise in taxes represents a total increase of 2.04 percent over last year’s bills, according to Alfredo Aguilar, the schools’ business administrator.
During a brief review of the budget on April 27, Aguilar highlighted the 13 new courses planned for the middle and high schools, completion of the 1:1 Chromebook initiative at the middle school level, and maintenance projects such as window replacements at George Washington Middle School and roadway repairs at Benjamin Franklin Middle School.
He also noted various ways in which the district will attempt to curb spending, such as auditing school phone lines in an effort to convert to digital lines and cancel those that are not in use; installing additional solar panels to decrease energy expenses; and participating in a statewide consortium to purchase faster Internet access at a reduced cost.
Though some trustees said that the budget is not perfect, they agreed that it is a responsible plan that reflects the entire district and achieves the BOE’s goals.
“We have a sound budget, but we’re reminded of the challenges in front of us,” said BOE Vice President Vince Loncto, adding that the board’s responsibility is an “imperative to maintain the quality and reputation of the public schools” while “minimizing the impact on the taxpayers.”
MAY 4, 2015 LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, MAY 4, 2015, 9:59 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Ridgewood school board trustees approved the 2015-16 budget without objection, but their vote last Monday night didn’t go unnoticed.
Nearly 80 parents and teachers crammed inside the Education Center, where two dozen of the attendees appealed to the board for reconsideration of several staffing decisions proposed for the upcoming academic year. Each of them claimed that rising student enrollment numbers without an accompanying increase in class sections would hinder the educational experience for their students.
In a brief budget presentation to the board and public, Alfredo Aguilar, the schools’ business administrator, pointed to various budget highlights, including $1.5 million in technology upgrades and a new generator for the Education Center. He also noted the budget was adjusted for “enrollment shifts between grade levels.”
One of those adjustments was the recent addition of kindergarten sections at two schools.
“There have been some concerns voiced in some of our sections in the elementary schools,” said BOE President Sheila Brogan. “Willard kindergarten [enrollment] is creeping up. That is an area of concern.”
