>You should not address the Principal as “Margy”.
Is 100 families the same as 100 signatures? Isn’t it just 100.
Travel is the laughing stock because they have a group of parents who think that they run the school. A petition is meaningless against a school contract. Maybe one of the parents should run for the board of ed – O wait, they tried that already. We don’t want them running any of our schools.
>· Mr. Robert Hutton was sworn in as the new Board member.
· The Board re-elected Mr. Joseph Vallerini as President.
· The Board re-elected Mr. Robert Hutton as Vice President.
· The Board approved the continuation of the position of Student Representative to the Board.
· The Board approved various adoptions or appointments, including:
o the current Board of Education Policy Manual, the NJSBA Code of Ethics.
o The Record and The Ridgewood News as official newspapers for all legal advertisement and notices for the 2009-2010 school year.
o the firm of LAN Associates, Midland Park, as Board of Education Architect for the period July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010, at fees negotiated for each individual project.
o the firm of McKinley, White & Co., L.L.P., Paramus, to serve as Board of Education Auditor and provide accounting services to the School Board for the period July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010, to conduct the 2008-2009 audit of the Ridgewood Board of Education for an estimated fee of $37,200 to $38,800.
o Anthony Sciarrillo, Esq. of Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &
Cooper, P.C., Westfield as Board Counsel for the period July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010, at the rate of $160 per hour.
o McManimon and Scotland, Newark, as Bond Counsel for the period July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010, at the rate of $160 per hour.
o David B. Rubin, Esq., P.C., Metuchen, as Special Education Counsel for the period July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010, at the rate of $170 per hour.
o Adams Stern Gutierrez & Lattiboudere, LLC., Newark, as Special Counsel to continue handling a certain Board legal issue to its conclusion, at the rate of $150 per hour, for the period July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010.
o Willis HRH, Morristown, as health insurance broker of record for the 2009-2010 school year.
o continuation of participation in the Northeast Bergen County Insurance Group (NESBIG) for Workers’ Compensation Insurance for the 2009-2010 school year. NESBIG is a shared services cooperative purchasing arrangement whereby member school districts acquire lower rates for insurance through joint purchasing. This is the second year of a previously approved two-year agreement.
o continuation of The Burton Agency, Westwood, as insurance broker of record for property/casualty insurance and risk manager for the 2009-2010 school year. This is the second year of a previously approved two-year appointment.
o student activity fee of $75 at the middle schools and $100 at the high school for those students who participate in any co-curricular activity for the 2009-2010 school year.o tuition rates for the 2009-2010 for out-of-district-students and staff members’ children, as listed below:Kindergarten $ 9,517 $ 500
Grades 1-5 $ 12,730 $ 1,000
Grades 6-8 $ 13,824 $ 1,000
Grades 9-12 $ 13,159 $ 1,000
LLD $ 26,613 N/A
Autism $ 63,432 N/A
o substitute rates of pay for the 2009-2010 as listed below:
Teachers (first five days of one consecutive assignment): $ 90 per diemDaily/Permanent(6th day of consecutive assignment in system): $125 per diem
Long-term Determined by administration after evaluation of educational
background and experience
Nurse $130 per diem
Secretaries $ 12.50 per hour
Former RAES members $ 13.25 per hour
>”The facts speak for themselves… over 100 families signed the petition regarding Margy, with a marginal percentage for approving her tenure. Vallerini’s rant about public speaking before moving into public comment kept people from saying anything negative at the mic. View the webcast for yourself. Vallerini ranted about “after consulting with our attorneys…”. These scare and bully tactics happen all of the time from Cottage Pl. Do you think it is coincidental that RPS server went down right before a BOE meeting that brought in many, many concerned parents?”
>”things to consider. Mayor Pfund was a personal donor to Valley Hospital until 2006, his law firm (Reiseman, Rosenberg & Pfund, LLP) listed Valley hospital as one of its clients on their website until the listing mysteriously disappeared, Pfund’s father has willed part of his estate to Valley after he dies! Yet Pfund has not rescued himself from the considering the H-Zone issue? Others on the Planning Board have for less association.”
Can we put this to rest once and for all ?….or not?
>New Jersey has doubts about state budget plan, poll finds
Posted by pcox May 04, 2009 06:23AM
A poll found many New Jerseyans aren’t sold on the proposed state budget.
The Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll released Sunday found more than 80 percent of respondents have heard about the spending plan. Nearly half of them say it does too little to cut spending, while 17 percent say it cuts too much.
Patti Sapone/The Star-LedgerHundreds of New Jerseyans protest April 23 at the State House to keep our public lands open, including at least nine parks that have been slated for closure due to the Governors proposed budget cuts.
However, respondents overall differed on how to address the state’s fiscal woes.
Seventy-five percent support plans to boost income taxes on those earning more than $500,000 and 69 percent back higher taxes on cigarettes and liquor. But 68 percent don’t want state aid cut to municipalities and 63 percent oppose cutting arts funding.
The poll also found 53 percent oppose ending property tax rebates for those earning more than $75,000, while 45 percent support it.
The telephone poll was conducted April 23-27 with 803 New Jersey adults and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
>Posted on Sat, May. 2, 2009
tp://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/20090502_New_Jersey_GOP_gubernatorial_candidate_Christie_backs_school_vouchers.html
New Jersey GOP gubernatorial candidate Christie backs school vouchers
By Cynthia Burton
Inquirer Staff Writer
New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Christopher J. Christie pledged yesterday to create a school voucher program that allows students from failing districts to attend schools in districts that accept them.
In a conference call about the state’s fiscal crisis, Christie decried the high costs of education in 31 mostly poor districts where the state is under a court order to spend additional money. About 55 percent of state education aid goes to those districts – known as the Abbott districts – which educate about 23 percent of New Jersey’s students.
Christie would address the cost problems, in part, by giving parents vouchers for schools outside of those failing school districts. That means, for example, a student in Camden could attend school in Cherry Hill, as long as Cherry Hill agreed to accept the voucher.
Speaking of poor educational outcomes in some of the state’s Abbott districts, he said, “In those districts, we need to increase competition to make sure we get a better educational product.”
Though long-discussed, New Jersey does not have a school voucher system. It does have charter schools, which Christie said he would expand.
“You have to bring more charters and more competition to those Abbott districts,” he said. “If you do that, you will bring costs down because charter schools are spending less and producing better results.”
Christie’s voucher plan differs from a plan by his Republican primary opponent Steve Lonegan, which would not allow students to attend schools outside their district.
“Steve has a fake voucher program – I have a real one,” Christie said.
Lonegan said he wanted “to drive competition within a school district. One of the critical elements to economic growth is to reopen closed schools.”
Allowing students to take their vouchers and attend school outside their towns and cities “would siphon students off to other cities and leave behind empty schools and empty neighborhoods,” Lonegan said.
In the news conference, Christie also chided Gov. Corzine, a Democrat, for revenue projection shortfalls. The governor announced Thursday that the state’s projected revenue between now and June 2010 would be as much as $2 billion less than expected.
Christie said revenue projections should have given more weight to rising unemployment levels, which, in turn, have lowered the state’s income tax collection.
Contact Cynthia Burton
at 856-779-3858
or [email protected].
>A story in the Sunday Record contains this pgh:
The marchers originally intended to continue into Ridgewood and protest in front of The Valley Hospital, but they turned back at the Ridgewood line, because the village denied Birkner parade and public assembly permits for the march. A lawyer hired by the village warned him in writing that if he proceeded into Ridgewood, the marchers would be subject to “appropriate legal action, damages and any other enforcement costs incurred by the Village of Ridgewood.”
1)How did the newspaper know the village of Ridgewood denied a permit (The article contains no attribution for this statement.)
2)What was the reason for the denial
3)What is the name of the lawyer
4)Who in the village government hired this lawyer
5)Was the lawyer hired for this specific purpose
>On Friday, May 1, 2009 , Citizens Community Bank, Ridgewood, New Jersey was closed by the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance. Subsequently, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named Receiver. No advance notice is given to the public when a financial institution is closed.
All deposit accounts have been transferred to North Jersey Community Bank, Englewood Cliffs, NJ . For more information on North Jersey Community Bank, visit us at www.njcb.com.
The FDIC has assembled useful information regarding your relationship with Citizens Community Bank. Besides a checking account, you may have Certificates of Deposit, a business checking account, a Social Security direct deposit, and other relationships with the institution.
https://www.ccbnj.com/
>The mayor of Westwood will lead a walk from Westwood Borough Hall to The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood on Saturday to protest Valley’s efforts to block the reopening of Pascack Valley Hospital.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/health
Westwood mayor plans to protest hospital action
Friday, May 1, 2009
BY LINDY WASHBURN
NorthJersey.com
STAFF WRITER
The mayor of Westwood will lead a walk from Westwood Borough Hall to The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood on Saturday to protest Valley’s efforts to block the reopening of Pascack Valley Hospital.
“I will not sit idly by without bringing attention to what it is they are trying to do,” Mayor John Birkner Jr. said of efforts by Valley and Englewood Hospital and Medical Center to prevent the reopening of the bankrupt former hospital.
Hackensack University Medical Center has applied with a for-profit partner for state permission to reopen the facility as a 128-bed community hospital.
A spokeswoman for Valley said the planned 4 1/2-mile walk “reinforces one of our points” about access to health care services since Pascack Valley closed in November 2007.
Quality health care services “are available close to home,” said Megan Fraser, the spokeswoman. “In fact, they are within walking distance.”
In contrast to an earlier news release from the borough, no demonstration is planned in Ridgewood and no buses will be provided to transport those who can’t walk, Birkner said. He has no plans to disrupt traffic, interrupt access to the hospital or make a speech, he said.
He said he will carry a sign, “People First: Reopen Pascack Valley Hospital.”
“I’m not looking to be confrontational,” said Birkner. “I’m a gentleman.”
Birkner expects fewer than 100 people to participate, but he encouraged “any other like-minded citizens who would like to exercise their First Amendment rights” to join him at 1 p.m.
Next Thursday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Rosemary Gambardella is expected to decide whether to approve a deal between Hackensack and the estate of the bankrupt hospital to buy the former hospital’s license for $800,000.
Valley has offered $2 million to buy the license and kill it. Along with Englewood, Valley has argued that the sale to Hackensack should not be approved. Hackensack needs the license to complete its state application.
E-mail: [email protected]
>Update:
the Ridgewood blog has been informed by several readers that on the Virgin Mobile’s website if you change or attempt to change your plan or account information you will automatically charged the full monthly change with out any prorating of charges and fees .Like most mobile phone companies customer service is almost impossible to get on the line and when you do there answer to everything is you changed your plan so you were charged for a new plan no refunds end of story. the Ridgewood blog would suggest that dumping Virgin Mobile is a better end of story.
let us know if you have been riped off by a business or government agency
>The Fly was somewhat surprised to receive a piece of campaign literature from BOE member Bob Hutton in her mailbox yesterday (April 28). Several other residents on The Fly’s street received the mailing yesterday also.
The BOE election was held on Tuesday, April 21. Mr. Hutton ran unopposed.
Does anyone have a clue as to why Bob’s flyer arrived a full week post-election, and why he bothered spending money on campaign literature if he had no opposition?
>
1976: President Gerald Ford orders a nationwide vaccination program to prevent a swine-flu epidemic.
https://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/dayintech_0324
Ford was acting on the advice of medical experts, who believed they were dealing with a virus potentially as deadly as the one that caused the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic.
The virus surfaced in February at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where 19-year-old Pvt. David Lewis told his drill instructor that he felt tired and weak, although not sick enough to skip a training hike. Lewis was dead with 24 hours.
The autopsy revealed that Lewis had been killed by “swine flu,” an influenza virus originating in pigs. By then several other soldiers had been hospitalized with symptoms. Government doctors became alarmed when they discovered that at least 500 soldiers on the base were infected without becoming ill.
It recalled 1918, when infected soldiers returning from the trenches of World War I triggered a contagion that spread quickly around the world, killing at least 20 million people. Fearing another plague, the nation’s health officials urged Ford to authorize a mass inoculation program aimed at reaching every man, woman and child. He did, to the tune of $135 million ($500 million in today’s money).
Mass vaccinations started in October, but within weeks reports started coming in of people developing Guillain-Barré syndrome, a paralyzing nerve disease, right after taking the shot. Within two months, 500 people were affected, and more than 30 died. Amid a rising uproar and growing public reluctance to risk the shot, federal officials abruptly canceled the program Dec. 16.
In the end, 40 million Americans were inoculated, and there was no epidemic. A later, more technically advanced examination of the virus revealed that it was nowhere near as deadly as the 1918 influenza virus. The only recorded fatality from swine flu itself was the unfortunate Pvt. Lewis.
History’s verdict of the program is mixed. Critics assail Ford, accusing him of grandstanding during an election year — it did him no good, because he lost anyway — while kowtowing to the pharmaceutical companies. Supporters laud the ability of the nation’s health bureaucracy to mobilize so effectively.
Those who remembered 1918 probably consider it money well spent.
https://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/dayintech_0324
>Under a plan discussed during their April 22nd Work Session, Village Council members may soon introduce an ordinance that would increase metered parking rates from 25 cents to 50 cents per hour.
Coincident with the proposed rate increase, the time period during which metered rates are in effect would change to 10AM – 6PM Monday through Saturday (excluding train station parking lot meters). Currently, metered rates are in effect from 9AM – 8PM Monday through Saturday (excluding train station parking lot meters).
Village Manager James Ten Hoeve advised Council members that the proposed fees were in line with those currently being charged by communities such as Westfield, Milburn, Montclair, and Summit.
>Boomer Bows Out in Shakeout That Led to Vermont Beard
By Mark Clothier and John Helyar
https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aK.0hS39ItNc&refer=home
April 27 (Bloomberg) — In early 2008, David Roberts’s morning routine at the Ridgewood, New Jersey, train station was as unchanged as the view from its platform, which overlooks a downtown anchored by the Daily Treat diner and a 77-year-old movie theater. Roberts would sip coffee, eat a corn muffin, scan the Financial Times and step aboard the 7:50 train.
This was not the same trip he had made for the 14 years he worked for three Wall Street firms. This was a commute to nowhere.
Roberts, 61, was bound for an outplacement center on New York’s East 37th Street, where he pursued job leads and the dream of starting a consulting firm with former colleagues. Like many of his neighbors in Ridgewood, Roberts had been thrown out of work after the credit markets seized up last year, joining thousands of commuters in the competition for jobs that don’t exist anymore.
Roberts, an economist at Dominion Bond Rating Service until January 2008, was fired 13 months after he predicted in a published report the recession that would end his livelihood.
“You can see a train wreck coming,” Roberts says. “But that doesn’t mean you can get out of the way.”
Roberts has suffered through a chain of unanswered job applications, an ill-fated relocation to Washington, and depression. As of April, he had lost or spent more than half of his $1.4 million in savings. One of the few risks he takes with money these days is at the poker table.
26,000 Jobs Lost
Roberts and his wife — who is battling multiple sclerosis — are moving to Vermont, where they honeymooned and often vacation. He has grown a gray-and-white beard more befitting the Green Mountains than Wall Street.
Knowing that the money he has left won’t last forever, Roberts must figure out a new way to earn a living. “I don’t know where the income is going to come from,” he says.
Roberts is one of 26,000 people who lost financial services jobs in New York City from January 2008 to March 2009, according to Moody’s Economy.com. Many live in bedroom communities such as Ridgewood — a Bergen County enclave of 24,300 people 25 miles from Wall Street.
Ridgewood retailers say some stores’ Christmas receipts were off 40 percent last year. As many as 30 stores and restaurants in the business district are for sale. The village government trimmed three building inspectors after a two-year, 46 percent drop in construction activity.
Ramapo Retreat
Nestled in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains, Ridgewood has had a symbiotic relationship with New York’s financial district since the mid-1800s, when tycoons built summer homes there. Commuter trains soon carried dad to the financial jungle while mom stayed home and raised the kids. “It’s for domesticated masters of the universe, a throwback to the 1950s,” says Erik Sorenson, chief executive officer of online career firm Vault.com and a Ridgewood resident.
Ridgewood’s projected median household income for 2009 is $129,394, according to market research firm Nielsen Claritas, which makes it the 17th-most-affluent U.S. community in the 20,000 to 50,000 population range. From 1991 to 2006, the average home sale price more than tripled to $864,000, according to the New Jersey Multiple Listing Service.
read the rest on Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aK.0hS39ItNc&refer=home
>How to Wake Up Slumbering Minds
By CHRISTOPHER F. CHABRIS
We are in the midst of an explosion of knowledge about how the human mind and brain work — how memory comes in many different types, each stored in a different part of the brain; how our minds constantly process information outside our conscious awareness; how differences in brain function help to define differences in our personalities. A lot of this new knowledge raises provocative questions, not least about human nature.
But as disgruntled students have been saying for ages: How are we ever going to use this stuff? Chemistry can boast of miracle drugs, and genetics has done wonders for our food supply and for medical diagnosis. What about psychology and neuroscience? Shouldn’t research on learning and memory and thinking help us to learn, remember and think better?
Daniel T. Willingham thinks that it should. In “Why Don’t Students Like School?” he poses nine questions that a teacher might want to ask a cognitive scientist — beginning with the question in the title — and then answers each, citing empirical studies and suggesting ways for teachers to improve their practice accordingly. But Mr. Willingham’s answers apply just as well outside the classroom. Corporate trainers, marketers and, not least, parents — anyone who cares about how we learn — should find his book valuable reading.
So why don’t students like school? According to Mr. Willingham, one major reason is that what school requires students to do — think abstractly — is in fact not something our brains are designed to be good at or to enjoy. When we confront a task that requires us to exert mental effort, it is critical that the task be just difficult enough to hold our interest but not so difficult that we give up in frustration. When this balance is struck, it is actually pleasurable to focus the mind for long periods of time. For an example, just watch a person beavering away at a crossword or playing chess in a noisy public park. But schoolwork and classroom time rarely keep students’ minds in this state of “flow” for long. The result is boredom and displeasure. The challenge, for the teacher, is to design lessons and exercises that will maximize interest and attention and thus make students like school at least a bit more.
Elsewhere Mr. Willingham has his curious teacher ask: “Is drilling worth it?” The answer is yes, because research shows that practice not only makes a skill perfect but also makes it permanent, automatic and transferable to new situations, enabling more complex work that relies on the basics. Another question: “What is the secret to getting students to think like real scientists, mathematicians, and historians?” According to Mr. Willingham, this goal is too ambitious: Students are ready to understand knowledge but not create it. For most, that is enough. Attempting a great leap forward is likely to fail.
It should be said that Mr. Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, is not in favor of merely making learning “fun” or “creative.” He advocates teaching old-fashioned content as the best path to improving a student’s reading comprehension and critical thinking. Such a view makes Mr. Willingham something of an iconoclast, since 21st-century educational theory is ruled by concepts like “multiple intelligences” and “learning styles.”
Mr. Willingham notes that students cannot apply generic “critical thinking skills” (another voguish concept) to new material unless they first understand that material. And they cannot understand it without the requisite background knowledge. The same is true of learning to read: Trying to use “reading strategies” — like searching for the main idea in a passage — will be futile if you don’t know enough facts to fill in what the author has left unsaid. Here, as always, Mr. Willingham shows how experiments support his claims.
The trendy notion that each person has a unique learning style comes under an especially withering assault. “How should I adjust my teaching for different types of learners?” asks Mr. Willingham’s hypothetical teacher. The disillusioning reply: “No one has found consistent evidence supporting a theory describing such a difference. . . . Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn.”
It turns out that while education gurus were promoting the uplifting vision of all students being equal in ability but unique in “style,” researchers were testing the theory behind it. In one experiment, they presented vocabulary words to students classified as “auditory learners” and “visual learners.” Half the words came in sound form, half in print. According to the learning-styles theory, the auditory learners should remember the words presented in sound better than the words presented in print, and vice-versa for the visual learners.
But this is not what happened: Each type of learner did just as well with each type of presentation. Why? Because what is being taught in most of the curriculum — at all levels of schooling — is information about meaning, and meaning is independent of form. “Specious,” for instance, means “seemingly logical, but actually fallacious” whether you hear it, see it or feel it out in Braille. Mr. Willingham makes a convincing case that the distinction between visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners (who supposedly learn best when body movement is involved) is a specious one. At some point, no amount of dancing will help you learn more algebra.
One is tempted to criticize “Why Don’t Students Like School?” in only one respect. The text is peppered with the kind of attention-grabbing but ultimately pointless pictures that abound in contemporary textbooks. When Mr. Willingham cleverly describes an episode of the TV medical drama “House” to illustrate how experts think differently from novices — they don’t necessarily have more knowledge but they do focus more rapidly on the most relevant information — he wastes almost half a page on a photograph of the actor who plays the main character. The space would be better spent on more of Mr. Willingham’s brilliant analysis of how we really learn and his keen insight about how we ought to teach.
Mr. Chabris is a psychology professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.
Why Don’t Students Like School?
By Daniel T. Willingham
(Jossey-Bass, 180 pages, $24.95)
