Ridgweood school board names new business administrators
AUGUST 29, 2014 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, AUGUST 29, 2014, 12:31 AM
BY JODI WEINBERGER
STAFF WRITER
A former school district employee will return to the Ridgewood Board of Education (BOE) as its business administrator in the coming months.
On Aug. 25, the BOE approved the hire of Alfredo Aguilar as the district’s business administrator, with a contract lasting through June 30, 2015. Aguilar will be paid an annual salary of $168,000.
Although Aguilar was unanimously approved to hire, he will remain in his current position, as the business administrator for the Pascack Valley Regional High School District, for 90 days or until a replacement is found.
In the interim, assistant business administrator Gertrude Engle has been named acting business administrator and will receive a stipend of $250 per day.
Aguilar previously served as the business administrator for the Oradell Board of Education and from 2009 to 2012 was the assistant business administrator in Ridgewood.
From 2004 to 2009, Aguilar was a middle school math teacher in Paterson Public Schools and from 2001 to 2004 was a financial services officer in the U.S. Air Force.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/education/board-names-new-business-administrator-schools-1.1077823#sthash.oZjujw36.dpuf
Tag: Back to School
School Rankings : Daily Beast fails to mention Ridgewood in its top Schools Survey
School Rankings : Daily Beast fails to mention Ridgewood in its top Schools Survey
The Daily Beast had this one,
Study: Kindle readers have lower comprehension levels
Study: Kindle readers have lower comprehension levels
by Mark Tyson on 20 August 2014, 12:00
Tags: Kindle reader
Studies into the impact of digitisation on the reading experience have indicated that what is read in e-books is “significantly”less well absorbed than the same information read from a traditional paper book. In the most recent study it was found that the plot reconstruction ability of an e-book reading subject was most at fault – when the readers were asked to recall story events in the correct order.
The Guardian reports that this latest research paper is the result of a comprehension study of 50 readers, all of whom were given a short 28-page story by Elizabeth George to read. Half of the subjects read the e-book on an Amazon Kindle and the other half read through a paperback. After their reading, the subjects were tested on various aspects of the story.
Study: Kindle readers have lower comprehension levels
https://hexus.net/mobile/news/
Readers absorb less on Kindles than on paper, study finds
Research suggests that recall of plot after using an e-reader is poorer than with traditional books
https://www.theguardian.com/
Study: Smartphones stunting students’ social skills
Study: Smartphones stunting students’ social skills
August 27, 2014
LOS ANGELES – When you see a tween or teen on the street, in a store, outside a school building, sitting in a car, eating at a fast food restaurant…virtually anywhere…what are they likely to be doing? If your answer is staring at their Smartphone, you’d probably be right. And a new study done by the University of California Los Angeles says that can be a roadblock in a child’s ability to read emotions.
The UCLA psychology department looked at two groups of 11- to 12-year-olds. During the research, one group made significantly more progress than the other. The group deprived of all digital media, even television, performed significantly better at recognizing emotions than those allowed to keep texting and tweeting and talking on Facebook after just five days.
In an article published in Malay Mail Online, Patricia Greenfield, senior author of the study, complained, “Many people are looking at the benefits of digital media in education, and not many are looking at the costs. Decreased sensitivity to emotional cues—losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people—is one of the costs.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports that as of 2009 22 percent of teens log on to their favorite social media sites more than 10 times a day, half log on more than once a day. Seventy-five percent own cell phones. Twenty-five percent use them for social media, 54 percent for texting and 24 percent for instant messaging. No doubt those numbers have increased since that poll was published.
Researchers worked with a total of 105 sixth graders from a Southern California public school, a small but significant study. Half of those students spent five days at a nature and science camp where digital technology was strictly taboo. It seems participants were forced to interact with each other face-to-face instead of screen-to-screen.
All were tested before and after the five days.
https://eagnews.org/study-smartphones-stunting-students-social-skills/
LA Schools’ $1 Billion iPad Fiasco Ends After Corruption Revelations
LA Schools’ $1 Billion iPad Fiasco Ends After Corruption Revelations
Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……………………..
Robby Soave|Aug. 27, 2014 1:55 pm
Los Angeles Unified School District is ending its billion-dollar iPad program, which has drawn widespread criticism for distributing expensive devices to teachers who didn’t know what to do with them and students who kept losing or breaking them.
The costly program was considered a total failure, and it’s little surprise that district officials have finally relented and scaled back. More surprising, however, are revelations that District Superintendent John Deasy may have engaged in some crooked bargaining to arrange the deal in the first place.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Deasy’s previous connections to Apple and Pearson—the companies contracted to supply the iPads and instructional materials for them, respectively—amount to a conflict of interest. In hindsight, the bidding process that Apple and Pearson won to score the contracts seems biased in those companies’ favor,The LA Times notes:
Last week, a draft report of a district technology committee, obtained by The Times, was strongly critical of the bidding process.
Among the findings was that the initial rules for winning the contract appeared to be tailored to the products of the eventual winners — Apple and Pearson — rather than to demonstrated district needs. The report found that key changes to the bidding rules were made after most of the competition had been eliminated under the original specifications.
In addition, the report said that past comments or associations with vendors, including Deasy, created an appearance of conflict even if no ethics rules were violated.
Emails obtained by The LA Times show Jaime Aquino, Deasy’s deputy superintendent, advising Pearson officials on how to win the bid.
https://reason.com/blog/2014/08/27/la-schools-1-billion-ipad-fiasco-ends-af
Millennials aren’t listening to you. That’s a good thing.
Generation Independent
Millennials aren’t listening to you. That’s a good thing.
Nick Gillespie & Emily Ekins from the October 2014 issue
There was a moment at the 2013 Grammy Awards that captured how millennials are different than Gen Xers and baby boomers, and what it all means for the future of America. After the traditional parade of side-boob-flashing songstresses and tonsorially wackadoo manchildren allegedly flouting convention in utterly predictable ways, the hipster band fun. (whose name is uncapitalized and over-punctuated) was honored with a richly deserved statuette for the catchy generational anthem “We Are Young.”
The song broke big after being featured on the hit series Glee, itself a touchstone of the millennial generation, roughly defined as those born between the beginning of the 1980s and the early ’00s. Glee is set in the sort of high school unimaginable to Americans raised on older coming-of-age fare such asHappy Days, Rock and Roll High School, or even the ultra-G-rated Saved by the Bell. OnGlee, even (especially!) the football players sing in a music club that features a paraplegic guitarist, a Down Syndrome cheerleader, and a lesbian Latina, an ensemble that would have been a punchline just a few decades ago. (As recently as 1983, U.S. Interior Secretary James Watt made headlines for joking that an advisory panel he appointed consisted of “a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple,” a comment that led to his resignation.)
fun.’s “We Are Young” is a smart variation on that enduring theme of pop music, the booty call. “We are young,” croons the singer to a lost or near-lost love, “So let’s set the world on fire/We can burn brighter/than the sun.” But then comes the generational twist: After vaguely alluding to “scarring” his lover through some unspecified failure, the protagonist sings: “If by the time the bar closes/And you feel like falling down/I’ll carry you home./I know that I’m not/All that you got.”
What matter of musical strangeness is this, actually acknowledging that your drunken, staggering bedmate could do better than you? “We Are Young” is a song in which the singer is a decent human being and penitent lover, an emotional designated driver rather than the standard-issue letch that has dominated the charts from your grandparents’ “Baby It’s Cold Outside” to your parents’ “Under My Thumb” to the entire hair-metal genre of the ’80s.
The 2013 Grammys, in contrast, were a millennial coming-out party for a different kind of POV. The post-racial, post-ethnic, post-American, post-heteronormative, post-everythinglikes of Rihanna and Bruno Mars and Frank Ocean and Janelle Monae and Skrillex took center stage, and the winningly metrosexual fun. took home top honors for its kinder, gentler love song.
Then came the real intergenerational shocker, when one of the members of the group thanked his parents for letting him live at home “for a very long time.” Did Mick Jagger even have parents? Would Axl Rose have been able to pronounce the word mother, let alone thank her for letting him couch-surf? You could feel a half-century of rebellious rockers, from Jim Morrison to Joey Ramone, groaning in their graves.
Millennials, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s rich, are different than you and me. For one thing, at around 80 million strong, they’re as big as or bigger than the baby boom—and far more populous than both Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980) and the Silent Generation (1929-1945). They are filled with what at first glance looks like contradictions: More Democratic in their voting behavior than previous generations, and yet more politically independent than any cohort in history. Worryingly unafraid of the word socialism, and yet full-bore in favor of the free market.
https://reason.com/archives/2014/08/26/generation-independent
It Was a Wild and Crazy Summer of Criminalizing Campus Sex
It Was a Wild and Crazy Summer of Criminalizing Campus Sex
“In an effort to address sexual assault, college campuses are on the verge of entering into an Orwellian nightmare.”
Robby Soave | August 27, 2014
Students returning to class this fall, consider yourselves warned: This was the summer that federal regulators, state lawmakers, and college administrators got together for a threesome—incidentally criminalizing campus sex in the process.
The debate over campus sexual assault—how much it happens, and how to handle it when it does—has been heating up for a while now thanks to increasing federal intervention, but the latest round of action kicked off at the end of spring, when the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education (OCR) identified 55 colleges under investigation for failing to report and handle rape allegations. The message to colleges from the federal government was do something, or else.
Colleges are definitely responding to the pressure. Consider Occidental College, which pursued a rape caseagainst a male student for having drunken sex with a female student. Investigators determined that the encounter was consensual, but administrators pursued sanctions anyway, insisting that the female student’s consent was invalidated because she had been drinking. The argument makes no sense—if all drunken sex constitutes rape, then both the accused and the accuser are equally guilty. Nevertheless, the male student was expelled.
Hashing out which person is the initiator of sex and which person is the consenter can be tricky from a legal standpoint. College hookups happen under the influence of substances that impair judgments, and what takes place between the sheets is inherently shrouded from public scrutiny.
But that didn’t stop the California legislature this summer from trying anyway. Responding to the federal government’s call to do something, or else, state lawmakersapproved SB 967, a bill that would force state universities to establish a stricter definition of consensual sex: one that requires the initiator to acquire “unambiguous, informed, freely-given, and voluntary” permission.
That part may not sound so bad—sex, after all, should be absolutely consensual—but forcing college administrators to play the role of judge, jury, and career executioner for the accused students in these cases carries a whole host of problems.
https://reason.com/archives/2014/08/27/it-was-a-wild-and-crazy-summer-of-crimin
Ridgewood Back to School Updates : School starts on September 4!
8.26.14: The Back-to-School issue of Newsline is out. Click here to view the newsletter as a PDF. Please note that this version has the corrected Back-To-School Night schedule.
NEW! 8.26.14: REVISED Back-To-School Night Schedule: Travell School’s Back-To-School Night begins at 6:30 p.m. rather than 6 p.m. The Willard School Back-To-School Night for Grades K-2 has been changed from September 18 to September 23. Please click here for the newly revised schedule. Please note that this change is an update from that which is printed in the Newsline newsletter sent to Ridgewood homes last week.
8.13.14: Click here to read an opinion piece co-authored by Dr. Fishbein and River Dell Superintendent Patrick Fletcher on unfunded mandates, posted on NJ.com on August 8.
8.05.14: Back-To-School Information: Parents and guardians are asked to update emergency contact information and also are required to review various district policies and grant certain permissions. This Mandatory Annual Online Re-registration process takes place through Skyward Family Access between August 11 and September 12. Detailed instructions will be mailed to homes on or about August 11. For details and links, please click here.
8.12.14: The Ridgewood YWCA offers before and after school programs in the Ridgewood elementary schools. Pleaseclick here for information and registration forms.
The next Regular Public Meeting of the Ridgewood Board of Education will be held on Monday, September 8, 2014 at 7:30 p.m.
The public is invited to attend the meeting at the Ed Center, 49 Cottage Place, Floor 3. The meeting will be aired live on FiOS channel 33 and Optimum channel 77. Or it may be viewed live via the district website atwww.ridgewood.k12.nj.us using the “Link in Live” tab.
Click here to view the agenda for the August 25, 2014 Regular Public Meeting.
Click here to view the webcast of the August 25, 2014 Regular Public Meeting.
4 Charts Every Mom With Kids Going Back to School Should See
4 Charts Every Mom With Kids Going Back to School Should See
Kelsey Harris / @KelsRenHar / August 25, 2014
Many kids are heading back to public school this week, and so begins fall and spring semesters. You have entrusted the government to give your child a good curriculum and a teaching staff you can count on. But what happens when the school staff is equipped with a big list of employees, but not necessarily a big crop of teachers focused on your child?
Tax dollars in places you don’t know about.
Even though the Obama Administration proposes spending $25 billion specifically to “provide support for hundreds of thousands of education jobs” in order to “keep teachers in the classroom,” research by both Heritage and The Fordham Institute reveal alarming numbers: only half of education jobs belong to teachers.
Heritage’s education policy expert Lindsey Burke says “school districts should trim bureaucracy and work on long-term reform options for better targeting taxpayer resources,” instead of putting taxpayers on the hook for more federal spending.
Check out the numbers in the four charts below.
1. The charts proving only half of education jobs are teachers:
https://dailysignal.com/2014/08/25/4-charts-every-mom-kids-going-back-school-see/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonvqvIZKXonjHpfsX56eUoX6C0lMI%2F0E
BOE MEETS TONIGHT MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2014
BOE MEETS TONIGHT MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2014
The next Regular Public Meeting of the Ridgewood Board of Education will be held on Monday, August 25, 2014 at 5 p.m.
The public is invited to attend the meeting at the Ed Center, 49 Cottage Place, Floor 3. The meeting will be aired live on FiOS channel 33 and Optimum channel 77. Or it may be viewed live via the district website at www.ridgewood.k12.nj.us using the “Link in Live” tab.
Click here to view the agenda for the August 25, 2014 Regular Public Meeting.
The new back-to-school: Deeper discounts, longer sales
The new back-to-school: Deeper discounts, longer sales
Hadley Malcolm, USA TODAY 11:53 a.m. EDT August 11, 2014
You may be basking in the last few weeks of summer and counting down to Labor Day getaways, but for retailers it was time to go back to school a month ago.
That’s when many of them started promotions for one of the biggest shopping periods of the year — one that’s also become perhaps the most prolonged shopping period of the year, with families buying back-to-school items from practically the fourth of July until after classes start. Deloitte’s annual back-to-school shopping survey out last month found that more than a quarter of parents plan to finish their shopping after the start of the school year.
“We’re seeing it expanded out throughout the season,” says Steve Bratspies, executive vice president of general merchandise for Walmart. He says customers are shopping more frequently and making smaller basket purchases over a longer period of time rather than doing one huge buy.
And that means stores are throwing absurdly cheap prices — think 17-cent notebooks — and price-matching guarantees at customers in an effort to stay relevant and competitive over three months of back-to-school shopping.
• Staples is offering a 110% price-match: If a customer finds a product cheaper somewhere else, Staples will match the price plus give the customer back 10% of the difference. And those 17-cent notebooks are part of a list of items at low prices for the entire shopping season. Rulers, glue, paper, colored pencils, erasers, crayons, ballpoint pens and markers are all on sale for a dollar or less through Labor Day.
• Walmart has 30% more back-to-school items available online than last year and is reducing prices on 10% more back-to-school items than last year both online and in stores. This month, a price-matching pilot program rolled out store-wide. It allows customers to enter an ID code listed on their in-store receipt at Walmart.com and compare the prices of everything they bought to all advertised prices from that week. If Walmart’s prices were more expensive, it will refund the difference in the form of an e-gift card.
Retailers sharpening their pencils for back-to-school test
Retailers sharpening their pencils for back-to-school test
JULY 20, 2014 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JULY 20, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY JOAN VERDON
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
* Retailers will use the season to gauge consumers’ mood and try new sales strategies ahead of the holiday season
As shoppers head to stores for back-to-school clothes and supplies, retailers will be studying their every move and treating the season as a practice test for their final exams — the fourth-quarter holiday sales.
For national retailers, the back-to-school shopping season beginning in mid-July and running through mid-September is when they give new marketing strategies a trial run and assess the mood of the consumer before launching their holiday promotions.
Last year, retailers expected more-robust spending, and lower-than-expected demand left them with unsold inventory they had to clear out at deep discounts. Those discounts caused some shoppers to grab fall markdowns as Christmas gifts, and that hurt holiday sales.
At a time when retail is changing dramatically, with shoppers demanding the same service and deals whether they are in a store, on their computer or on their phone, back-to-school is a time for retailers to “get things ironed out prior to the holiday season itself,” said Dave Richards, senior managing director for the global consulting firm Accenture Retail.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/facing-back-to-school-test-1.1054266#sthash.KcoY8CeT.dpuf
Labor Day and Young Americans
Labor Day and Young Americans
Statement by Paul T. Conway, President of Generation Opportunity
Washington, DC – (9/3/12) – Generation Opportunity President Paul T. Conway, former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Labor, has issued the following statement:
“Labor Day is a day set aside specifically to honor the achievements of the American worker. But on this Labor Day, as Americans traditionally celebrate with family and friends, the sad reality is that millions of young Americans will not return to a full-time job tomorrow.
“Through no fault of their own, over twelve percent of young Americans are unemployed and have been denied the opportunity to contribute their talents and to achieve success.
“Due to failed leadership and failed policies over the last three and a half years, their lives and dreams have been delayed. It is no surprise that young adults, union and non-union alike, have little enthusiasm for leaders who defend the status quo while offering no ideas for more economic opportunity.
“Young Americans deserve more from their leaders and want solutions that place a higher value on the growth of businesses and opportunity as opposed to government.”
—
For Generation Opportunity, the polling company, inc./WomanTrend conducted a nationwide online survey of 1,003 American adults ages 18-29 between July 27 and July 31, 2012. This study has a ±3.1% margin of error at a 95% confidence interval, and sampling quotas were used to ensure the survey was representative of the larger 18-29 year old nationwide population with regard to race, region, and gender.
76% of Millennials plan to vote in the election for President this year.
Only 38% believe that today’s political leaders reflect the interests of young Americans.
89% of young people ages 18-29 say the current state of the economy is impacting their day-to-day lives (accepted multiples responses) (randomized):
51% reduced their entertainment budget;
43% reduced their grocery/food budget;
43% cut back on gifts for friends and family;
40% skipped a vacation;
38% drive less;
36% take active steps to reduce home energy costs;
32% tried to find an additional job;
27% sold personal items or property (cars, electronic appliances, or other possessions);
26% changed their living situation (moved in with family, taken extra roommates, downgraded apartment or home);
17% skipped a wedding, family reunion, or other significant social event;
1% other;
8% none of the above (accepted only this response);
3% do not know/cannot judge (accepted only this response).
84% of young people ages 18-29 had planned to but now might delay or not make at all a major life change or move forward on a major purchase due to the current state of the economy (accepted multiples responses) (randomized):
38% – Buy their own place;
32% – Go back to school/getting more education or training;
31% – Start a family;
27% – Change jobs/cities;
26% – Pay off student loans or other debt;
25% – Save for retirement;
23% – Get married;
12% – None of the above (accepted only this response);
4% – Do not know/cannot judge (accepted only this response).
76% believe that the lack of job opportunities is shrinking the American middle class.
64% of young people ages 18-29 believe the availability of more quality, full-time jobs upon graduation is more important than lower student loan interest rates.
Last month, Generation Opportunity released the non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) unemployment data for Millennials for July 2012:
The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds specifically for July 2012 is 12.7 percent (NSA).
The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans for July 2012 is 22.3 percent (NSA); the youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics for July 2012 is 14.0 percent (NSA); and the youth unemployment rate for 18–29 year old women for July 2012 is 12.6 percent (NSA).
The declining labor participation rate has created an additional 1.715 million young adults that are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.
If the labor force participation rate were factored into the 18-29 youth unemployment calculation, the actual 18-29-unemployment rate would rise to 16.7 percent (NSA).
Labor Day: Union Money in Elections
File Photo by Boyd Loving
Labor Day Union Money in Elections
Amy Payne
September 3, 2012 at 8:59 am
This election year, millions of Americans will donate to the political candidates and initiatives of their choice at the local, state, and federal levels. But for unionized workers, union dues come out of their paychecks and go to political causes—and they aren’t consulted on where that money will go.
In July, The Wall Street Journal’s Tom McGinty and Brody Mullins published an eye-opening report that “Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought.”
They broke down the unions’ political spending from 2005 to 2011: $1.1 billion “supporting federal candidates through their political-action committees, which are funded with voluntary contributions, and lobbying Washington, which is a cost borne by the unions’ own coffers.”
But that was only the beginning. Add to that another $3.3 billion for political activity from “polling fees, to money spent persuading union members to vote a certain way, to bratwursts to feed Wisconsin workers protesting at the state capitol last year.” Who pays for this? The workers, McGinty and Mullins report: “Much of this kind of spending comes not from members’ contributions to a PAC but directly from unions’ dues-funded coffers.”
Despite findings that 60 percent of union members object to their dues being spent on political causes, this practice continues. Why?
In the 27 states without right-to-work laws, many unions are able to put clauses in their contracts that allow them to fire workers who do not pay union dues. If a worker wants to work for a unionized firm, he or she is forced to join the union and pay the dues, which can run from several hundred to several thousand dollars a year.
In a new paper, Heritage’s James Sherk gives an example of this rule at work: “The United Auto Workers (UAW), which organized General Motors’ Michigan factories in 1937, is a case in point. Michigan does not have a right-to-work law, so union-represented workers must pay the union’s dues or get fired.”
Notice the year there—1937. The workers coming on the job in 2012 are bound by a vote taken by their ancestors, essentially. “General Motors’ current employees never had the chance to vote for or against the UAW. UAW representation was a non-negotiable condition of their employment.”
Sherk argues that these rules make no sense for today’s workers. Just 7 percent of private-sector union members voted for the union that represents them, and the vast majority of government unions organized at least 30 years ago. The workers inherit the representation of yesteryear, which negotiates their terms of pay, promotion, layoff, and retirement.
Once organized, unions remain indefinitely. Naturally, that gives union leaders little reason to be accountable to their members in any way—they’re not going to have to stand for re-election.
To give unionized workers the freedom they deserve, Sherk says, this system should end.
Congress and state legislatures should at the least require government and private-sector unions to stand for re-election. Re-election votes every two to four years would allow employees to regularly assess their union’s performance as their representative.…
An even better reform would be to give workers representative choice—allowing individual employees to choose who represents them, irrespective of who other employees select. This would remove the union’s monopoly over the workplace, allowing employees to negotiate contracts tailored to their needs.
Workers should have the freedom to choose whether they want union representation or not. And if they do want to join a union, they should be able to choose which union they join. This freedom would give them more say over paying union dues in the first place, and how those dues are used. It would also give them the opportunity to negotiate merit-based raises, which unions do not allow.
America’s unionized workers deserve the same freedoms as non-unionized workers—in an election year and every year.
The History of Labor Day
The History of Labor Day
by the US Dept.Of Labor
Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Founder of Labor Day
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
A Nationwide Holiday
The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.
https://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm