the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Due to two recent separate positive COVID-19 cases of unknown origin, George Washington Middle School will transition to all remote learning tomorrow, Tuesday, November 17, 2020. Inperson instruction will resume on Monday, November 30, 2020. Please make sure that George Washington Middle School students do not participate in out of school activities during this time of remote learning.
After a careful review, the district in coordination with the Ridgewood Health Officer was not able to identify a clear connection or origin of infection between the two cases. Therefore, according to the NJDOH COVID-19 Regional Risk Matrix and the Ridgewood Health Officer both recommend the school closure.
All close contacts have been identified and notified. If you have not been notified then your child has not been determined to be a close contact.
I’m thinking this is an intermediate step….BoE will change the name of the school to Aronsohn Academy in June.
There is absolutely no way in the world that this particular Board of Education would name anything with the last name Aronsohn.
From my perspective, it is time to close ALL the Ridgewood schools, not just GWM, for in person learning even if only for a temporary period while the second wave of the virus crashes upon New Jersey . At the last public BOE meeting Monday evening , Fish and Lembo were self congratulating each other for having kept the Ridgewood schools open while they openly admitted every other surrounding towns/districts have taken more proactive actions to protect the children and staff of their schools by going remote for x days.
Today, two more cases, one at RHS and one at Orchard. It is implausable to believe that ALL 26 cases to date in the Ridgewood school system are unrelated and non school related as the Ridgewood Village Health contact person and the school admin currently state as there appears to be NO virus testing, other than a temperature swipe, of any student prior to entering any Ridgewood school building and it is a FACT an adult person and/or student can be asymptomatic and carry the virus unwittingly into a building to infect otherwise healthy individuals in the closed confines of the non HEPA filtrated classrooms of the Ridgewood public school system.
Just this afternoon, New York City has temporary paused in person learning and when opened up again soon , all students will be required to have passed a mandatory virus test in order to enter a school facility .
But here in Ridgewood we have a BOE which does not want to take the hard steps to ensure that all are safe by asserting the phrase “…..the schools are safe…..” while each and every day since last week more and more Ridgewood residents are getting infected.
Why is the BOE taking this stand? I don’t know but others have mentioned this is what lame duck Fishbein wants as does Mr. Lembo, who they say has a stake in this matter as he currently has a special education child currently being provided services within the school district and he would prefer these services to take place in the confines of a classroom. If this is truly the case, I sincerely sympathize with the situation as a family member of mine is also a special needs child , but the health and safety of all Ridgewood students should outweigh any potential personal rational to lobby to keep the schools open if the majority of signs point toward remote learning.
So for whatever the reasons and the reluctance by the BOE to take a more serious and sober look at current situation, this is no time to be self congratulating yourselves by saying that the Ridgewood Board of Education is keeping the school doors open.
Lembo doesn’t have many family concerns from my understanding.