“In my opinion CoVid has only exacerbated a dynamic that exists in any place of employment: Some people going above and beyond (whatever the motivation may be for their extra efforts), a lot of people meeting expectations and doing the job they are paid to do … and then the people I would describe as the Takers. No place of employment, public or private, is immune to this. Some of my kids’ teachers were very much present and obviously putting in a great deal of time and effort to make remote learning as good as possible. Others – crickets. Posting assignments, assigning kids to watch YouTube videos in lieu of teaching and just not interacting w/kids even remotely during the spring. In my (private company) – no different. Some decided to take advantage of WFH to not do all too much. I’m not speaking about people who had to care for sick family or step in to school their own kids. I hate to break it to people, but there are always Takers in society. The issue is if there is a tipping point, and productive people start to feel that they’ve been ‘had’ and decide why bother. In the private sector, it probably isn’t the right decision (in the long run) to so obviously show that you’re not really needed for the success of your enterprise.”
“If the BOE wants to be taken seriously (including those at the top with very obvious and unethical conflicts of interest, who shall not be named), they should remain keenly focused on what an overwhelming majority of parents want for their kids, which is more in-person learning…5 days a week. The taxpayers already pay way to much for the school budget, and while we may tolerate some non-sense and waste in the spirit of town civility, the one thing that will most certainly cause residents to “storm the castle” is if we are forced to spend our hard earned dollars to incentivize lazy and ineffective teachers, who are using COVID as a tool for their personal agenda. Every profession is exposed to the risks of COVID, so why should they be preferentially treated at our expense? Either opt out if you are truly scared, or just follow the damn protocols…”
Hackensack Meridian Health Clinical Contributors to this Story
Aysha Seeni, M.D. contributes to topics such as Internal Medicine
Pamela Orellana, M.D. contributes to topics such as Family Medicine.
Ridgewood NJ, Until there is a vaccine created, or we have achieved herd immunity, COVID-19 must remain top of mind when it comes to you and your family’s health and well-being. As we head into flu season, this year, we need to protect ourselves from COVID-19 on top of seasonal flu. Here are tips for staying healthy.
“The Department of Health in collaboration with the Department of Education, has developed guidance to help local health departments assist schools in providing a safe environment for students and staff,” said Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli. “Understanding that COVID-19 may impact certain areas of the state differently, the Department will provide data by 6 regions of the state to inform local decisions.”
Ridgewood NJ, Many parents, caregivers, and guardians face new and difficult choices about how their child will return to school in the fall, such as deciding between in-person and virtual learning.
According to the CDC, schools play an important role in students’ educational achievement, health, and wellbeing. Working with local health officials and with parents and caregivers, schools also have an important role in slowing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) while protecting students, teachers, and staff and helping ensure students have safe and healthy learning environments.
Ridgewood NJ, With reopening schools being a hotly debated topic and in-person learning essential for letting parents go to work this fall, WalletHub today released a nationally representative School Reopening Survey, which found that 55 percent of parents want their children to learn in person. Below are highlights of the survey, along with a WalletHub Q&A (audio available).
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood teachers joined several other groups of teachers protesting the opening of schools this fall. According to North Jersey Media , “Ridgewood teachers gathered atop a Route 4 overpass to oppose a return to classrooms, saying in-person learning is not yet safe. NJ Education Association and other neighboring teachers oppose as well.
“It’s literally crisis-teaching in order to pretend that there’s some semblance of normalcy.” -Becky Catanzaro, a teacher from Ridgewood.”
“Bureaucrats, administrators…they definitely get paid by the word. No parent will suffer through this mess of information relating only to process. Moreover, the state is asleep at the switch. The districts and the NJEA know this and are confident that any scrutiny they receive for this mumbo-jumbo will end up being untimely and will only be partial. Nothing more than a post-game wrap-up. Therefore, they do as they please, everyone gets paid, nobody gets laid off or rendered superfluous, and the quantity of information absorbed by the students in the form of “learning” will continue to wither and shrink.”
Washington DC, according to the group America’s Frontline Doctors , “American life has fallen casualty to a massive disinformation campaign. We can speculate on how this has happened, and why it has continued, but the purpose of the inaugural White Coat Summit is to empower Americans to stop living in fear.
America’s frontline doctors
If Americans continue to let so-called experts and media personalities make their decisions, the great American experiment of a Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy, will cease.”
FRONTLINEDOCTORS STORM D.C. – “THOUSANDS OF DOCTORS” ARE BEING SILENCED”
I will not post the link as this will then be deleted as have all similar posts have been removed around the globe by social media. Dr. Stella Emmaneul: (05:27)
Hello, I’m Dr. Stella Emmanuel. I’m a primary care physician in Houston, Texas. I actually went to medical school in West Africa, Nigeria, where I took care of malaria patients, treated them with hydroxychloroquine and stuff like that. So I’m actually used to these medications. I’m here because I have personally treated over 350 patients with COVID. Patients that have diabetes, patients that have high blood pressure, patients that have asthma, old people … I think my oldest patient is 92 … 87 year olds. And the result has been the same. I put them on hydroxychloroquine, I put them on zinc, I put them on Zithromax, and they’re all well.
Dr. Stella Emmaneul: (06:12)
For the past few months, after taking care of over 350 patients, we’ve not lost one. Not a diabetic, not a somebody with high blood pressure, not somebody who asthma, not an old person. We’ve not lost one patient. And on top of that, I’ve put myself, my staff, and many doctors that I know on hydroxychloroquine for prevention, because by the very mechanism of action, it works early and as a prophylaxis. We see patients, 10 to 15 COVID patients, everyday. We give them breathing treatments. We only wear surgical mask. None of us has gotten sick. It works.
Dr. Stella Emmaneul: (06:46)
So right now, I came here to Washington DC to say, America, nobody needs to die. The study that made me start using hydroxychloroquine was a study that they did under the NIH in 2005 that say it works. Recently, I was doing some research about a patient that had hiccups and I found out that they even did a recent study in the NIH, which is our National Institute … that is the National … NIH, what? National Institute of Health. They actually had a study and go look it up. Type hiccups and COVID, you will see it. They treated a patient that had hiccups with hydroxychloroquine and it proved that hiccups is a symptom of COVID. So if the NIH knows that treating the patient would hydroxychloroquine proves that hiccup is a symptom of COVID, then they definitely know the hydroxychloroquine works.
Dr. Stella Emmaneul: (07:42)
I’m upset. Why I’m upset is that I see people that cannot breathe. I see parents walk in, I see diabetic sit in my office knowing that this is a death sentence and they can’t breathe. And I hug them and I tell them, “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to live.” And we treat them and they leave. None has died. So if some fake science, some person sponsored by all these fake pharma companies comes out say, “We’ve done studies and they found out that it doesn’t work.” I can tell you categorically it’s fixed science. I want to know who is sponsoring that study. I want to know who is behind it because there is no way I can treat 350 patients and counting and nobody is dead and they all did better.
Dr. Stella Emmaneul: (08:21)
I know you’re going to tell me that you treated 20 people, 40 people, and it didn’t work. I’m a true testimony. So I came here to Washington DC to tell America nobody needs to get sick. This virus has a cure. It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax. I know you people want to talk about a mask. Hello? You don’t need mask. There is a cure. I know they don’t want to open schools. No, you don’t need people to be locked down. There is prevention and there is a cure.
Dr. Stella Emmaneul: (08:48)
And let me tell you something, all you fake doctors out there that tell me, “Yeah. I want a double blinded study.” I just tell you, quit sounding like a computer, double blinded, double blinded. I don’t know whether your chips are malfunctioning, but I’m a real doctor. I have radiologists, we have plastic surgeons, we have neurosurgeons, like Sanjay Gupta saying, “Yeah, it doesn’t work and it causes heart disease.” Let me ask you Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Hear me. Have you ever seen a COVID patient? Have you ever treated anybody with hydroxychloroquine and they died from heart disease? When you do, come and talk to me because I sit down in my clinic every day and I see these patients walk in everyday scared to death. I see people driving two, three hours to my clinic because some ER doctor is scared of the Texas board or they’re scared of something, and they will not prescribe medication to these people.
Dr. Stella Emmaneul: (09:35)
I tell all of you doctors that are sitting down and watching Americans die. You’re like the good Nazi … the good one, the good Germans that watched Jews get killed and you did not speak up. If they come after me, they threaten me. They’ve threatened to … I mean, I’ve gotten all kinds of threats. Or they’re going to report me to the bots. I say, you know what? I don’t care. I’m not going to let Americans die. And if this is the hill where I get nailed on, I will get nailed on it. I don’t care. You can report me to the bots, you can kill me, you can do whatever, but I’m not going to let Americans die.
Dr. Stella Emmaneul: (10:09)
And today I’m here to say it, that America, there is a cure for COVID. All this foolishness does not need to happen. There is a cure for COVID. There is a cure for COVID is called hydroxychloroquine. It’s called zinc. It’s called Zithromax. And it is time for the grassroots to wake up and say, “No, we’re not going to take this any longer. We’re not going to die.” Because let me tell you something, when somebody is dead, they are dead. They’re not coming back tomorrow to have an argument. They are not come back tomorrow to discuss the double blinded study and the data. All of you doctors that are waiting for data, if six months down the line you actually found out that this data shows that this medication works, how about your patients that have died? You want a double blinded study where people are dying? It’s unethical. So guys, we don’t need to die. There is a cure for COVID.
Ridgewood NJ, As the US moves toward the scheduled start of the 2020-21 school year, the US CDC published several updated guidance documents to support schools in preparing for classes in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of prominent US government officials, including President Trump, have publicly called for schools to resume in-person classes, but many state governments, school officials and teachers, and health experts warn that might not be feasible or safe in some circumstances. The updated guidance includes information for schools regarding the current understanding of COVID-19 risk to children and their role in driving transmission in the community and at home as well as recommendations for implementing appropriate social and physical distancing (including mask use), enhanced hygiene and sanitation, and disease surveillance and monitoring systems. The guidance also includes considerations based on the current level of community transmission, including the possible need to close schools due to uncontrolled community spread. In addition to schools, the CDC offers tools and information aimed at parents to help evaluate risk.
“the costs to bring our school buildings to an adequate level of safety for students and staff are astronomical.”
There’s no need to do any of that.
New Jersey’s top high school graduates, as a group, outstrip the academic achievements, performance, and potential of those of every other state. This is borne out by the fact that the cutoff for National Merit Semifinalist status, which in every state consists of the top half of the top one percent of PSAT test scores among Junior Year PSAT test takers in that particular state (the Junior year being the only year that counts for purposes if National Merit competition), is higher in New Jersey than it is for every other state, year in, year out. In fact, in recent years, the PSAT cutoff in New Jersey for achieving National Merit Semifinalist status has typically been only one point away from a perfect score. Mind you, every Junior in every U.S. state who elects to take the PSAT to get involved in the National Merit competition takes the exact same version of the PSAT test on the exact same day. So there is no funny business involved, and it becomes possible to do a perfect apples-to-apples comparison data between states to see which states are producing the greatest number of top-shelf college-ready students as a proportionate to the total number of high school graduates they certify in a given year.
Ridgewood NJ, with the discussion on back to school heating up many concerned parents are looking for alternatives. On of those options are home schooling, which some parents are investigating after positive experiences with remote classes this spring after most schools closed. While these options may appear similar on the surface, remote classes and home schooling are very different. Home school options vary widely, including utilizing existing curricula or developing personalized course work, and the standards and requirements vary from state to state.
While online classes and home school may be effective, they may not be viable options for everyone. These options may require computers, tablets, or smartphones and reliable high-speed internet service to fully participate, particularly for live-streamed classes or video sessions. Availability for both computers and internet services may not be feasible for lower-income families or those living in remote areas, and many parents may not be able to continue to work remotely or remain at home in order to supervise their children during the day.
Ridgewood NJ, Steve Beatty Secretary-Treasurer of the NJEA said in a Facebook post ,”At our meeting with the acting commissioner of the Department of Education and his staff last week (and our on-going meetings), we engaged in a discussion, albeit mostly one-sided, on the issues and concerns surrounding the re-opening of schools in September.
Our clear message was that there is no way the state can push to re-open schools in a way that would account for the health, safety, and educational integrity of our schools and all that enter them.
We have been consistent in our guidance and growing insistence along with our education stakeholder partners and an ever growing chorus of our members.
Keep the pressure up. On the local level by joining and/or communicating with your re-opening committee. On the state level by calling and emailing your elected representatives and the governors office as well as the commissioner and state board. We know the power of sustained and organized collective action. Our voice is being heard and must be heeded! New Jersey Education Association New Jersey Department of Education Governor Phil Murphy”
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood BOE member Mike Lembo said in a Facebook post ,”The Ridgewood School Board has called for a Special Meeting this coming Thursday July 23rd at 5pm. The topic will be the school reopening plan for the district. We know that parents, teachers, and students have many concerns, questions, and comments on the issue. Please let your voice be heard, as we called this meeting for all of you.
The meeting is going to be held remotely, you can find the BOE Webcast link to the meeting on our website homepage. Members of the public can call in comments during the public comment period of the meeting or write-in comments online prior to, and during, the Board Meeting. These comments will be heard, but any offensive, lewd, or obscene language will not be tolerated. There will be two public comment portions, one at the beginning of the meeting and one at the end. Do not forget to mute your broadcast when speaking to minimize sound feedback and do not forget to identify yourself before speaking!This is a special meeting concerning the school reopening plan only, the regular Board of Education meeting will be held on Monday July 27th. Comments, questions, and concerns related to other issues besides the reopening will be more appropriate then.”
Ridgewood NJ, CDC offers considerations for ways in which schools can help protect students, teachers, administrators, and staff and slow the spread of COVID-19 when reopening. Schools, working with state and local health officials, can determine whether and how to implement these considerations while adjusting to meet the unique needs and circumstances of the local community.
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