” As I have commented before, Ridgewood schools attract people from all over the country, esp. autistic students. My new neighbor from Alabama told me that they came here after seeing on the computer that Ridgewood had an excellent program for Autistic children. I know of 2 others who moved into our neighborhood for the same reason. I am sure there are others as we have a good number of school buses coming onto the block. The main problem is that our schools are forced to spend so much money on disabled children that they have had to cut back on so much that made our schools great in the past. But even a bigger problem than that is the schools no longer split children according to their ability. That means the faster learners can sit, bored for days, until the others catch up. (Several mothers told me that this is why they finally sent their children to private schools.) The school system no longer offers Gifted and Talented programs. Basically our educational system tends toward the medium student and this automatically will cause our schools to be lowered in any academic ratings. I have no idea as to a solution for this but as long as this is the way our schools are tending we will continually decline in academic stature. “