Michelle O’s lunch rules sour first day of school for many students
August 29, 2014
FLORENCE, S.C. – Students arrived on the first day of school and realized a lot had changed over the summer.
The lunch line they used to visit to pick up pizza and french fries now had “same school lunch food as the others with more salad.”
SCnow.com reports:
Sophomore Madeline Taylor noticed that hardly anyone was eating.
“The entire rest of the day all I heard about was how hungry everyone was,” she said. “I then became very concerned about what would happen if this continued everyday throughout the school year.”
In response, students launched a petition on Change.org to bring back their favorites. It’s titled, “Bring Back The Choice of Pizza and French Fries” and to date has over 400 signatures.
“My petition wasn’t just to bring back the pizza and french fries. It was to say that FSD1 can do better in providing a lunch that is appealing and healthy that students don’t mind eating,” Taylor tells the paper. “No one has ever explained to the students exactly why our favorite lunch choices have been taken away.”
“About 30 min to eat lunch and that leaves you with 23.5 hrs to get fat at home. The problem is not the school lunch it’s the food in the houses. People are still gonna get fat no matter how much misses obama wants to change a 30 min lunch break. Don’t punish the healthy people and the school’s revenue because they’re not getting that money with that food service,” Bryan Peterson wrote on the petition.
“I haven’t eaten anything all week and I am slowly deteriorating,” Olivia Holland wrote.
Inexpensive Device Keeps Students Safe In Classroom
POSTED 7:48 AM, AUGUST 29, 2014, BY ANGELICA SPANOS
A Connecticut made safety device could keep students safe in their classrooms. It was built here and tested in a local elementary school and now the creator wants it in schools across the state.
The device is called the Life Bolt. It is a simple metal device, that requires no training, and is inexpensive. It has been tested by engineers and teachers and is what many are backing as a creative and safe solution to secure classroom.
It works by drilling two receivers to a door; one on the jam and one on the door itself. A metal ‘U’ shaped bar then slides down into them. “It doesn’t change the environment,” said created Bill Letson of Armof Solutions. “It’s non obtrusive, it doesn’t show like it’s a lock device, it’s real simple to use teachers don’t have to read a manual they don’t have to know they have to push a button.”
Letson created the device and has gone through many phases of the Life Bolt. Now, he said this device is ready for classrooms during a code red active threat situation. The metal bar is light weight, strong, and it can hold closed against hundreds of pounds of pull pressure.
It has been tested by first responders including fire officials on a state and local level as well as teachers and school administrators. “Parents are sending children here, they are putting their lives in our hands while they’re at school, and we will do anything in our power to make sure we keep them as safe as possible,” said Alycia Trakas, a principal at a Connecticut elementary school.
Politics is practiced year-round in Bergen County, and street-level campaigning has been going on quietly all summer. But both Republicans and Democrats say the Rutherford Street Fair on Labor Day signals a more intense phase of electioneering. (Ensslin/The Bergen Record)
Reader , Thank heavens for the eminently qualified and blessedly plain-spoken Stanford professor James Milgram, who places the blame for this recurring nightmare right where it belongs: the ossified, math-allergic minds of this country’s education school faculties. If the husband-wife reform math zealots had safely touched down in the Ridgewood district’s superintendent’s office, as had been the plan before local parents merely suggested a conflict of interest with similarly off-kilter textbook publishers like Pearson, Ridgewood would now be a Botsford-powered Mecca for Common Core adherents looking for leadership in how to deprive high-potential students of decent foundations in math achievement.
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COMMON CORE BLOCKBUSTER: MATHEMATICIAN DR. JIM MILGRAM WARNS COMMON CORE WILL DESTROY AMERICA’S STANDING IN TECHNOLOGY
During a Friday conference call sponsored by Texas-based Women on the Wall, Stanford mathematician and former member of the Common Core Validation Committee Dr. James Milgram, told listeners that if the controversial standards are not repealed, America’s place as a competitor in the technology industry will ultimately be severely undermined.
“In the future, if we want to work with the top level people, we’re going to have to go to China or Japan or Korea… and that’s the future we’re looking at,” Milgram said during the call that was part of a day-long Twitter campaign to target Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s (R) decision merely to “rebrand” the Common Core standards in his state, even though he has a Republican supermajority in the legislature and an appointed state board of education.
Pence was in Dallas Friday for Americans for Prosperity’s Defending the American Dream summit, considered to be an essential stop for presidential hopefuls.
In less than 40 minutes, Milgram floored listeners with information about the Common Core standards, how they will affect the nation’s students and, ultimately, the country itself, and what parents and citizens can do to try to stop them. Listen to the podcast in full below:
Milgram began by addressing the reason why he was on the call: to let Pence know that his “rebrand” of the Common Core was a betrayal of Indiana’s citizens.
Born and raised in Indiana himself, Milgram that it was important to him as a fellow Hoosier that the state do a decent job with replacement standards after repealing the Common Core.
“The state actually paid me to evaluate new standards,” he said about his involvement in the review process.
The Stanford professor then explained to listeners a key reason why the Common Core standards will prevent students from moving into STEM careers.
Milgram said he was “incredibly disappointed that the drafts I was reading [of Indiana’s new standards] looked so much like the Common Core,” but was nevertheless happy to see that advanced math classes like pre-calculus, calculus, and trigonometry were left into the replacement standards.
“These were very well-done and absolutely impossible to teach if all these kids had were Core standards,” Milgram explained. “It was a complete disaster because even the things that they added—that were of high quality—were added to standards that couldn’t support them.”
Milgram described his experience in the 1990s when he was asked to assist with a project that would replace California’s “disastrous” education standards. The mathematician said he strongly recommended that students in the 8th grade take Algebra and that his recommendation was heeded.
From the time the new standards were put in place and until the time of the adoption of Common Core standards in California in 2010, Milgram said two-thirds of the students in the state were taking Algebra in the 8th grade and doing well, with over half of them at least proficient or above.
Milgram said this piece of information is critical because it showed that it was possible for almost every student to handle Algebra in the 8th grade.
“The group that made by far the most progress were the minorities – blacks and Hispanics – who had essentially been written off by the system,” Milgram explained, and then went on to reveal how the fact that challenging minority students – resulting in their increased performance – was a threat to faculty in universities.
“So, their numbers were increasing dramatically and I frankly think that the… faculty in the education schools throughout the country actually got extremely scared by this,” he continued, “because it contradicted everything that they’ve been telling us for the past hundred years about how education works and what one can expect and how one should train teachers.”
Milgram asserted that a strong education in mathematics is essential for success.
“If you don’t have a strong background in mathematics then your most likely career path is into places like McDonald’s,” he said. “In today’s world… the most critical component of opening doors for students is without any question some expertise in mathematics.”
Milgram explained that in the high-achieving countries, where about a third of the population of the world outside the United States is located, about 90 percent of citizens have a high school degree for which the requirements include at least one course in calculus.
“That’s what they [sic] know,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we [sic] know Algebra II. With Algebra II as background, only one in 50 people will ever get a college degree in STEM.”
Milgram warned that with the Common Core standards, unless U.S. students are able to afford exclusive private high school educations that are more challenging, they will be disadvantaged.
“This shows that, from my perspective, Common Core does not come close to the rhetoric that surrounds it,” he continued. “It doesn’t even begin to approach the issues that it was supposedly designed to attack. The things it does are completely distinct from what needs to be done.”
Milgram said, in California, they were able to deal with the problem of their poor academic standards in the 1990s because the curriculum was controlled by the state and the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley threatened to move all its research and manufacturing elsewhere if the problem was not addressed.
“The curricula we were fighting then… they’re back!” he announced. “We are hearing exactly the same kind of things now with Common Core as we heard back in the ’90s!”
“How can you have mathematics problems that don’t have a single answer or correct answer – any answer is correct?” Milgram asked. “Well, of course the answer is mathematically you can’t, and all of this is just a repeat of what went on 20 years ago in California – but this time, it’s national.”
“This time I don’t see any uniform or systematic way of getting rid of it,” Milgram said. “The only way you’re going to get rid of it is state by state and parent group by parent group. And if you’re lucky, industry will join you because high tech is ever a more important part of our economy.”
The bad news, according to Milgram, is that, returning to his experience in California in the ’90s, if students had been in that system with the older, poor standards for three or four years, “the damage couldn’t be undone,” he said.
“All of this should really make you angry at the people who are responsible,” Milgram said, directing himself squarely to the parents listening to him. “And the people who are responsible – I’m going to be blunt about it – are the people in the education schools – they’re the ones who had the ultimate say about all of this and they’re the ones whose beliefs are driving it.”
Milgram explained that a uniform perspective exists on issues in education and what is important to achieve among a vast majority of the faculty in schools of education. Because of this, he said, the same types of standards always come back.
“You must go after the schools of education and the faculty of these schools,” Milgram urged.
Asked about the fact that many industrial giants and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually support the Common Core standards, Milgram responded that in the ’90s, research centers in this country were still very much needed. Now, however, he noted that most of the research in top-level firms has moved out of the U.S. IBM’s main research center, he observed, is in India, and other companies have moved their research centers to Russia, Korea, and China.
“Even Microsoft has moved its software development to Beijing,” Milgram noted. The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, is the primary source of private funding of the Common Core standards.
“Production and manufacturing has also moved out of this country,” Milgram added. “The longer this continues, the more we’ll see our major industry move over to other countries and the jobs they generate will go with them.” Send
AUGUST 31, 2014 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, AUGUST 31, 2014, 1:21 AM BY KARA YORIO STAFF WRITER THE RECORD
The child’s eyes well up and lip starts to quiver. The worried “what ifs” start almost immediately.
What if my teacher is mean?
What if Joey teases me?
What if the work is too hard?
What if nobody sits with me at lunch?
As a parent, instinct kicks in.
“Don’t be nervous, there’s nothing to worry about,” you tell her. “Everything’s going to be OK.”
For an anxious kid that’s exactly the wrong thing to say, according to licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist Lynn Lyons, who co-wrote the book, “Anxious Parents, Anxious Kids: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous and Independent Children.”
“The external reassurance is a quick fix but it doesn’t last,” said Lyons, who practices in New Hampshire. “The error that parents make is trying to tell kids that everything will be OK rather than equipping them with the skill to handle things when they’re not OK.”
This time of year, a lot of kids are getting nervous. The approach of Labor Day in North Jersey brings worried faces and frequent complaints of stomachaches.
“It is completely normal and expected for children to have a little bit of anxiety when starting the school year,” Pompton Plains licensed clinical psychologist Peter Berzins wrote in an email.
For some children, however, anxiety can be overwhelming. If a child consistently doesn’t want to go to school, can’t concentrate while there, avoids normal activities like birthday parties or the school bus, won’t sleep in his own bed, if there is a lot of distress, crying, stomachaches and headaches, it is time to seek professional help, according to Lyons and Berzins.
“Too much anxiety can lead to a slew of problems including trouble focusing at school and downright refusal to go to school,” wrote Berzins, founder of Birch Tree Psychology, who is an expert in treating anxiety disorder.
He agrees that downplaying a child’s concerns and telling them everything will be fine is the wrong way to deal with an anxious child — as is ignoring a kid’s issues with anxiety.
“Basically parents unknowingly lie to their kids because they wish everything would be all right,” he wrote. “But being honest with your kids and seeing them for who they are … anxious … worried … is the best strategy.”
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/education/professional-advice-on-kids-and-back-to-school-anxiety-1.1078626#sthash.57g0YSqv.dpuf
US schools fight `boundary hoppers’
By Jane Han
korea times
DALLAS — As back-to-school season arrives in the United States, school districts popular among Koreans are on high alert as authorities start to clamp down on “boundary hopping,” an illegal trick where parents fake home addresses to send their children to better schools.
Public school officials of competitive districts in California, New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland are aggressively trying to weed out students who don’t belong in their school systems by requiring parents to prove residency in a variety of ways and, in some cases, making surprise home visits to confirm that students actually live at the addresses they say.
In the U.S., boundary hoppers could end up behind bars for theft of educational services or face fines of up to $5,000, as well as paying extra tuition and local taxes. The crime is taken seriously here as taxpaying residents argue that they are educating boundary hoppers, who don’t pay the same taxes, at their own expense.
“Boundary hopping is a huge headache for some schools and we know that many Koreans are at the center of the problem,” says Lee, a Korean education official in Ridgewood, N.J., who didn’t want to be fully named.
“I heard that several Korean students in the Ridgewood district wouldn’t go directly home after school. They would go to the library, spend a few hours there until a van picks them up, stop by a few other places and then finally take them home, which is not located in Ridgewood,” she said. “Someone from the Board of Education got a hold of this information and followed the van. I don’t know what happened next, but people should learn from this. Authorities are watching.”
Despite being a criminal activity, discussing boundary hopping isn’t uncommon in the Korean community. Many say Korean parents who are fresh from South Korea are often unafraid to ask acquaintances to do them the “favor” of lending their address.
“I was asked at least three times last year alone if they could use my home address. These parents all had children in middle and high school. They didn’t seem to know what kind of consequences boundary hopping would bring to me, them and their kids,” says Kim Yoo-eun, who lives in Plano, Texas, a district with one of the best public schools in the state.
Education experts say boundary hopping can not only lead to monetary penalties and criminal charges, but could ruin a student’s chances of entering college.
‘US manufacturing has been lost. Now it’s happening to TV’
From Game of Thrones to Modern Family, more US TV series are being filmed outside America than ever before, says John Hiscock
Hollywood’s big-budget blockbuster movies have often been filmed overseas, particularly in England because of the tax incentives offered. Now television is following suit and more US series than ever before are filming outside North America. Why?
US TV networks are increasingly drawn by accommodating tax breaks, the easy availability of professional crews and the novelty of fresh scenery and different landscapes. This combination has greatly increased the attraction of shooting their shows overseas.
Smaller nations such as Sri Lanka have begun offering tax incentives, and others such as New Zealand have improved their own production infrastructures to make them state-of-the-art. Iceland recently lured the HBO series Game of Thrones as well as the feature films Noah and Prometheus.
In Japan, government and film industry officials are considering an incentive programme that would bring them in line with the more than 30 foreign countries trying to lure US TV series.
Even shows which are specifically set in California, such as the Fox TV series Alcatraz, have gone abroad. Alcatraz, whose story begins in the infamous prison in the San Franciso Bay, is in fact filmed in Vancouver, where now-cancelled series such as The X-Files were filmed in the past.
Democrats are running out of time for an economic savior.
They have long predicted that an economic turnaround would be the elixir that helps them retain control of the Senate in November.
But with just a handful of big economic reports left before Election Day, the economic picture is largely in place. And while the outlook is bright, voters continue to hold a dim view of their own financial prospects.
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“There are still a lot of families playing catch-up,” said Jared Bernstein at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. “It’s got to be awfully hard for the typical voter to figure out what Congress had done to help the economy move forward. It’s a lot easier to figure out what they’ve done to screw things up.”
Broadly speaking, the economy has made gains in the last several months. The unemployment rate has held steady or dropped every month for over a year, and new data shows the economy grew this spring at its fastest rate in more than 12 months.
But the good news isn’t resonating with the public.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released earlier this month found 71 percent of people blamed Washington for the economy’s woes, and dissatisfaction mainly fell on incumbents overall, rather than on a particular party.
That poll found roughly half of voters believe the economy is still in a recession, even though the economic decline ended in June 2009.
Similarly, Gallup’s index of economic confidence has remained unchanged for all of 2014. People are actually less confident about the economy now than they were in January, when the unemployment rate was nearly half a percentage point higher.
With just two months to go before the midterm elections, there are just a handful of major economic indicators due before ballots are cast, including a pair of jobs reports.
With so little time left, it appears increasingly unlikely that views will change enough to boost the chances of Democrats, who are trying to escape the gravity of President Obama’s flagging poll numbers.
Some researchers argue the economic recovery has not been felt widely, with the majority of the gains going to people on the top of the income scale.
MAYOR’S OFFICE HOURS FOR RESIDENTS – Saturday, September 6 – 8AM – 10AM
Mayor Paul Aronsohn holds office hours for Ridgewood residents the first Saturday of every month. On September 6th the time will be adjusted due to Coffee with the Council at 10AM. Mayor Aronsohn will meet with residents on Saturday, September 6th from 8AM to 10AM in the Council Chambers (Sydney V. Stoldt, Jr. Court Room) on the fourth floor of Ridgewood Village Hall.
For an appointment to meet with the Mayor, please call the Village Clerk’s Office at 201-670-5500 ext. 206. You may come to the Mayor’s office hours without an appointment, but those with appointments will be given priority.
Woman found dead in Ho-Ho-Kus; son in custody
September 1, 2014 10:06 AM
Ridgewood NJ, A woman was found dead in the early morning hours in her Ho-Ho-Kus home, and her son is expected to be charged with her murder, according to police.
Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli says Karen Piotti, 63, suffered multiple stab wounds and beating trauma.
Her son, 24-year-old Nicholas Piotti, is currently in custody at the Bergen County Medical Center, Molinelli said. Murder charges will be filed later Monday.
Bolger Heritage Center, Ridgewood Public Library. Do you have an Arrow Yearbook looking for a new home? Is it from 1912, 1915, 1944, 1966, 1972, 1975, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1993, 1997, or 2011?
Ridgewood resident brings family’s history to life
AUGUST 25, 2014 LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2014, 3:22 PM BY BY JODI WEINBERGER STAFF WRITER
In 2012, John Dabney was newly retired and looking for a project to fill his time.
He began researching his family’s history with the goal of learning more about his past, but the personal exploration quickly grew to an “extended family investigation” that took him all over the country interviewing relatives.
Not long after his research began, he connected with a third cousin and award-winning author Joseph Dabney, who had also been collecting family history, and the two decided over a lunch in Georgia to combine their efforts into a book.
Called, “The Dabneys of South Carolina, A Family History in Stories and Pictures,” the book traces the family to 1795 with the birth of Alexander Dabney, who emigrated from Ireland to South Carolina.
From that start, John and Joseph Dabney were able to track down 2,500 Dabneys in 1,700 families and conducted more than 250 interviews with relatives in almost every state.
“I figured I would travel with my wife and do as much research as needed and ended up doing seven to 10 hours of work a day,” John Dabney said.
However, a lot of the research, as he discovered, could be done right in Ridgewood.
FALL PROGRAMS AT RIDGEWOOD RECREATION – Something for Everyone!
FALL PROGRAMS WITH RIDGEWOOD RECREATION
Register now for fall offerings with Ridgewood Parks and Recreation. There is something for everyone!
Pre-school – Abrakadoodle’s My First Art and Mini Doodler, Happy Feet Dance Introduction, and US Sports Institute’s Sport Squirts and T-Ball.
Elementary – Education Explorer’s Dramatic Arts and Tech Titans, Explore Science’s Robots & Simple Machines, Acrylics, Drawing, Abrakadoodle “Scape” Artist and sports include Skateboarding, Golf, KidSafe Self Defense and Tennis.
Adults – Acrylics, Watercolors, Chinese Brush Painting, Tennis, Zumba, Toning, Silver Strength and Motion, Mindful Meditation, Men’s Fitness, Jazzercise, Chair Yoga, Yoga Fit, No Aches/No Pain – Arthritis Class, Bridge & Canasta and Learn to Crochet.
Dates, times, location, and cost details can all be found at www.ridgewoodnj.net/recreation. Registration forms may be printed and mailed or you will find a link for online registration if applicable.
Please call the Recreation Office at 201-670-5560 with questions or if special accommodations are needed
Over the last two years, the U.S. has had a spike in expatriations. It isn’t exactly Ellis Island in reverse, but it’s more than a dribble. With global tax reporting and FATCA, the list of theindividuals who renounced is up. For 2013, there was a 221% increase, with record numbers of Americans renouncing. The Treasury Department is required to publish a quarterly list, but these numbers are under-stated, some say considerably.
The presence or absence of tax motivation is no longer relevant, but that could change. AfterFacebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin departed for Singapore, Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey introduced a bill to double the exit tax to 30% for anyone leaving the U.S. for tax reasons. That hasn’t happened, but taxes are still a big issue for many.
To leave America, you generally must prove 5 years of U.S. tax compliance. If you have a net worth greater than $2 million or average annual net income tax for the 5 previous years of $157,000 or more for 2014 (that’s tax, not income), you pay an exit tax. It is a capital gain tax as if you sold your property when you left. At least there’s an exemption of $680,000 for 2014. Long-term residents giving up a Green Card can be required to pay the tax too.
Now, the State Department interim rule just raised the fee for renunciation of U.S. citizenship to $2,350 from $450. Critics note that it’s more than twenty times the average level in other high-income countries. The State Department says it’s about demand on their services and all the extra workload they have to process people who are on their way out.
Companies find other ways to move offshore and avoid U.S. taxes
AUGUST 31, 2014 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, AUGUST 31, 2014, 1:21 AM BY ZACHARY R. MIDER BLOOMBERG NEWS THE RECORD
* Some firms have left the U.S. system not through inversions but through buyouts by investment funds
NEW YORK — There’s more than one way for a U.S. company to avoid taxes by claiming a foreign address.
Consider the business founded in 1916 as General Plate Co., a maker of sensors and controls for everything from Fords and Frigidaires to the spaceship that first carried Americans to the moon. While its top executives are still based in Attleboro, Mass., it’s now known as Sensata Technologies Holding NV of the Netherlands.
Sensata didn’t become Dutch by using the strategy known as “inversion” that has alarmed President Obama and that the U.S. Treasury Department and some Democrats in Congress are trying to curb. That technique, which involves reincorporating overseas without a change in majority ownership, has helped more than 40 U.S. companies lower their tax bills.
Instead, Sensata is one of at least 13 firms that have left the U.S. tax system through a sale to an investment fund, according to a tally by Bloomberg News. Although these companies have a combined market value of about $75 billion, this tax-avoidance strategy has gotten less attention in Washington than inversions and may be harder to discourage.
These buyouts mean profits for the U.S. private equity firms like Boston-based Bain Capital that orchestrated them. Bain earned more than $3 billion after it took Sensata public as a Dutch company in 2010, with an effective tax rate about one-tenth of some competing manufacturers.
Shifting to a foreign tax domicile “is looked at hard in every private equity deal,” said Joan Arnold, a tax partner at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia. “They will be interested in what they can do to minimize taxes and maximize sale price.”
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/tax-avoiders-get-creative-1.1078561#sthash.j4QYTjZn.dpuf
So many times growing up my brother and I would hear people say, “Rog – you should run for Mayor!” But that wasn’t Rog. He didn’t like the limelight. He preferred to be off to the side, watching, listening, educating and DOING.
He silently – and with no desire for thanks or praise — attended to things most of us assume others will address in our own communities. He would ride around town on his beloved bike, painting fire boxes so they would remain visible to the public. He reported to the Village Hall locations of non-functioning street lights. If he knew of someone in need, he would always take the time to offer them assistance or to just simply lend an ear.
Most importantly he was a fixture at every council meeting along with his longtime friend, Boyd Loving. He used to tell us that his goal was to keep the council “honest” on behalf of all the village residents.
To commemorate his lifelong dedication to Ridgewood and its citizens, there will be a plaque installed on the Village Council chamber podium on Friday, Sept. 5. We would like to invite the public to attend this event at Village Hall from 5:30 to 7 p.m. to help us celebrate such a unique and wonderful man. Our Uncle, friend to many, village champion.
