Category: Village of Ridgewood

>Yes, he is the President.
Yes, he can deliver a pro-education message.
Yes, it could be positve.

However, here is the fear factor.

He sends out discussion notes with a question about

“How can you help President Obama?”

Not “How can you help your country, countryman, parents, or yourself”, but how can you help HIM.

Children are susceptible to propaganda. (Nobody voted for Nixon in my elementary school mock election, the hippy teachers would have made us feel foolish.)

So as parents, it’s good to ask questions.

Maybe he’s already changed the subject matter of his speech. Maybe it will be more bland “stay in school” jargon and less “join the peace corps for the GREATER GOOD”. (Remember, this is a man who said he was going to raise capital gains tax, even though that has consistently resulted in LESS REVENUE, because IT IS FAIR.)

There a fine line for our type of government, a government that allows for private property and free markets.

We better keep an eye on it.

>I heard his wife address the graduating class of UCAL Merced – a school with a large minority population. She urged them to go back to the neighborhoods after graduation to community organize and tend to the social needs of the commnity.

Not for nothing. If I were a migrant farm worker breaking my back in the hot son picking lettuce to send my kid to college;
I’d want him or her to aim a tad higher.

She didn’t advise them to go work in the business community or open their own small busineses to create jobs and generate revenues for the community.

She didn’t tell them to be successful and inspire others to do so – actually help others to do so with the wealth accummulated by hard work and the opportunity that America offers all. She told them to go work in a soup kitchen.

I wonder if a young Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey were in that audience and decided to take that route instead of the one that brought them unimaginable riches ; which they have generously shared with the world’s needy.

I wonder about all those folks who would not have been helped if these two careers had been detoured by such a speech.

And I think I’ll keep my kids home on Sept. 8.

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A Senior Citizen bus service began on Tuesday, September 1st!

On Tuesdays the bus will operate from 9:30AM to 2:30PM. The bus will travel on an established “loop” route around Ridgewood. Click Here for schedule and map.

On Thursdays, the bus will operate from 9:30AM to to 2:00PM on a reservation only basis. To make a reservation, please call the Village Hall Reception Desk at 201/670-5500 x200. Call in advance, as the reservations will be given on a ‘first come first served’ basis.

Questions: please call 201/670-5500 x204.

>https://www.docstoc.com/docs/10582301/President-Obama’s-Address-to-Students-Across-America-September-8-2009

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>Construction a priority for Glen Rock’s school leader
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
BY EVONNE COUTROS
The Record
STAFF WRITER

https://www.northjersey.com/news/56479967.html

GLEN ROCK — David C. Verducci, 55, is getting settled into his new job as Glen Rock schools superintendent, starting a five-year contract in July. Verducci, of Upper Saddle River, was hired from a field of 40 candidates and will be paid $225,000 a year. He was the chief school administrator in River Vale since 2004 and served as superintendent in Fairview since 1992.

Q. What is a priority in the school district?

The [$45.3 million] renovation and construction. The high school and the middle school are in serious need, physically. The town passed the referendum project last year and that was pretty forward-thinking considering the economic atmosphere. People in Glen Rock have a clear sense of the schools as an investment and recognize they are quality places and also realize that to maintain that, it was time to do some big work.

Q. You are considered a superintendent who isn’t shy about using and relying on data to measure student progress. True?

Part of my presentation to the faculty is you have to deal with balance. It’s quality and quantity, efficiency, effectiveness, cooperation, competition. … So when I look at data-driven decision-making, you bet I study the numbers, but I study it in terms of student achievement and budget, but, it always has to be counterbalanced by the human factors.

Q. Do you believe it’s correct that you’re perceived as a data-driven superintendent?

If you use it right. There’s the problem with people who go only by the numbers. … I did my Ph.D. in organizational analysis and qualitative analysis. You have to be really careful not to extrapolate and over-extrapolate. What’s Freud’s great line? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Q. You have spent almost all of your more than 30 years as a teacher, vice principal, elementary principal and superintendent in Bergen County. Are you being choked by state mandates?

We don’t play fast and loose with the rules. I may not always like the rules, but the fact of the matter is if the state [Education Department] has the right to make them, we’ll live by them. It doesn’t mean that I won’t do my best to have them changed working through state organizations but no, we live by them. And that I insist on.

Q. How do you perceive the district?

There are no fatal flaws here. It’s not maximizing its full potential. I want to make Glen Rock the place where other people want to be. There has to be organizational integration … getting all the pieces to work together. What the district really needs to take off is just to have a unifying sense of vision.

E-mail: [email protected]

https://www.northjersey.com/news/56479967.html

>Anonymous said…
Public service is a thankless job. Ask any HSA president.

2:36 PM

Anonymous said…
Strictly speaking, at this point in the history of the Ridgewood district, any given HSA president is not serving the public.

They are serving Cottage Place. There is a difference.

Anyone who says that public service is a thankless job deserves no thanks from the public.

5:39 PM

Anonymous said…
Couldn’t agree more 5:39 PM. The HSAs truly believe that they are serving the parents and students. They don’t know how sucked in they are with keeping incompetent administrators and the board members who coddle them in place. That hurts everybody. That is why they think their volunteer jobs are thankless. How can we thank them for hurting us? This is public education and they are enablers of the system and its numerous flaws.

11:40 PM