photo by Boyd Loving
Ridgewood NJ, prior to the Ridgewood Board of Education meeting on Monday Night protesters gathered outside the Ed center on Cottage place. The group of determined parents pushed for the return of in person classes for Ridgewood schools.
A petition is making the rounds on social media to offer in-person instruction option for all Ridgewood public schools, which has gathered 475 signatures to date , https://www.change.org/p/dr-gorman-superintendent-offer-full-day-daily-in-person-instruction-option-for-all-ridgewood-public-schools .
The petition calls for Board of Education and Superintendent, Dr. Gorman, take immediate steps to implement full-day daily in-person learning in all schools by April 12, 2021 and enable the families and students of our district to have meaningful input into the district’s Covid 19 mitigation plans and procedures in our schools.
They need their ‘babysitting’ service back.
Parents should have an input into the reopening plans, especially since Fishbein and his crew did nothing except to lobby to keep all the Ridgewood the schools open without any meaningful measures taken when the outbreak began. More than anything else, that inaction led to the complete closing of an individual Ridgewood school no less than than 5 times over the last few months.
The use of plexiglass as proposed by this group of demonstrating Ridgewood parents to separate personal desk space has been implemented by many of the private schools in New Jersey that have safely opened. More importantly, HEPA class 5 filters should be retrofitted into all the school’s ventilation systems as this is the best way to stop the spread of this type of virus as it will return next winter when all the windows will be closed. The private schools in the area either have already upgraded to HEPA 5 filtration or are planning to do so before the 2022 school year begins. This expenditure should be penciled in as a line item in the school budget.
The district screwed up by not having a plan in place to vaccinate the teachers. This was a no brainer. Someone was clearly out to lunch.
The district screwed up by bending to the will of the REA, NJEA, NEA.