>02/05/08 7:30PM Planning Board Public
02/06/08 7:30pm Village Council Work Session
02/12/08 8:00Pm Board of Adjustment Public Meeting
02/13/08 8:00pm Village Council Public Meeting
02/19/08 7:30PM Planning Board Public Meeting
02/26/08 8:00PM Board of Adjustment Work Session
>The Record, Sunday, February 3, 2008
BY BOB GROVES
Bergen County will launch a paid ambulance corps to augment overworked volunteers in busy municipalities.
The plan is to use ambulances from county training facilities, staff them with salaried emergency medical technicians, and dispatch them to towns when local EMTs are not available, County Executive Dennis McNerney said.
To pay the EMTs, the county will bill the insurance companies of the patients they treat, McNerney said.
“No way is this a county takeover,” McNerney said in an interview. “We’re not saying [to volunteer EMTs], ‘We’re going to take over your ambulance.’ We want to work hand in hand” with them, he said.
The move follows a state report last fall that found New Jersey’s system of 25,000 volunteer and professional emergency medical responders to be in “near crisis” and in need of statewide coordination. Volunteer services in North Jersey are continually suffering from a manpower shortage, the report said.
Robert Riccardella, McNerney’s chief of staff, said he was disappointed state health officials haven’t acted on any of the report’s suggestions. “The state report was great, but we’re not going to wait for them,” he said. “We have immediate needs, now.”
The proposed county system, expected to start before spring, has been discussed since 2006, McNerney said. But the need has become more urgent since the closing of Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood, which has strained volunteer EMT service in several towns, he said. Ambulance crews in the area are working more hours because they’re driving longer round trips through traffic to reach hospitals.
“It’s very hard on the volunteers,” Riccardella said. “We’re seeing it countywide. They need someone, not to take over, but to assist, particularly during the daytime.”
The county will use a $100,000 grant from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs to cover start-up costs, McNerney said. The county already owns eight ambulances, which it uses to train EMTs. It needs a state license to use the vehicles for hospital runs.
The service will be operated by the county Department of Public Safety. The county plans to use two or three of its ambulances, adding more if necessary, Riccardella said.
Bill Kroepke, who has served as a volunteer EMT for the past 39 years, opposes a paid county ambulance service. He believes volunteers can handle the job.
“Personally, I’m against it,” said Kroepke, president of the Pascack Valley Volunteer Ambulance Association, which includes 21 municipalities.
“Up here in the Pascack Valley area, we’re doing quite well by our cooperative mutual aid agreement,” said Kroepke, who is also captain of the Washington Township Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and coordinator of the Pascack Valley Mutual Aid Group of seven towns, including Westwood, where Pascack Valley Hospital was located.
“Very seldom do we run short of rigs,” he said. “We’re stretched, but we’re holding our own.”
However, he acknowledged that some towns would welcome the county’s help “because it takes the heat off their lack of membership.”
Gloucester County is the only county in the state with paid EMTs. Its service began in 2007, said Tom Slater, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services.
Some municipalities in Bergen County already have paid EMTs in addition to volunteers. Paramus switched to this type of “hybrid” ambulance service last January to get rescue workers to emergencies more quickly, said Mayor James Tedesco.
“We had a response time problem – not a quality of care problem, but a response problem — especially during the daytime,” Tedesco said.
The new system has “greatly improved” response time, Tedesco said. Paid EMTs can go directly to the scene, unlike volunteers who have to leave home or business to first pick up an ambulance, he said.
Before paying their EMTs, Paramus could not recruit enough volunteers to meet the demand of emergency calls, Tedesco said. Paramus EMTs earn $12 an hour, on a par with those at local hospitals, he said. Under the hybrid system, the EMTs may work voluntarily, paid an hourly wage, or do a combination of both, he said.
“Volunteerism is extremely important,” said Tedesco, a volunteer fire chief for 30 years. “For me, this was a way to keep volunteerism alive and well, but also meet our fiduciary responsibility, by providing hourly employees.”
The borough projects that third-party billing, not taxpayers, will cover the costs of providing the EMT services, Tedesco said. Sixty percent of the patients transported by ambulance in Paramus are non-residents who are there shopping, or just driving through, he said.
Fair Lawn used to rely on mutual aid with Hawthorne for additional EMTs, but decided to supplement its volunteers with a private commercial ambulance service in 2006, said Borough Manager Tom Metzler.
The 60 Fair Lawn volunteers, who take 80 percent of ambulance calls, at first resented the idea of hiring paid EMTs, Metzler said.
“This is a normal human reaction,” he said. “Perhaps they felt threatened that we’d eliminate volunteers, or were reluctant to acknowledge” that they needed help, he said. By last year, however, they were in favor of it, he said.
“Let me tell you, dollar for dollar, shared services has worked for us,” Metzler said.
>From Tuesday, January 1, 2008 to Thursday, January 31, 2008
the Ridgewood Blog had 9375 unique visitors
and 21569 Hits for the month of January 2008 again making the Ridgewood blog the number one local news website in New Jersey .
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Let us know how we can work together .
>you are mistaken if you believe that NBC Nightly News is actually interested in telling the truth. Their story is already written, at least in template form–it’s just a matter of collecting enough video footage to string together to support their pre-defined script. If I had to guess, the template is: constructivist math reformers good/brave/really smart, traditional math supporters bad/provincial/akin to troglodytes.
It’s much more likely that the NBC Nightly News crew will be eager to allow the Interim and Assistant Superintendents to lead them around by the nose like the communist minders did in the old Soviet Union, and as they still do in Cuba and Red China.
As far as letting the truth be told, this blog is about all you have going for you right now.
Reading about this upcoming intrusion by NBC Nightly News makes me wonder if what is really happening is Assistant Superintendent Botsford pulling out the big guns to intimidate and frighten Ridgewoood parents and taxpayers into going back underground with their complaints and dissatisfaction. I can’t think of anything that I would put past her at this point. She really seems like the Manchurian Assistant Superintendent.
I think we should counter by calling the local channel 2 “Shame, Shame, Shame, Shame on You” newscrew to cover the real story, as we all know it to be.
Write to NBC and ask them to cover the math controversy in Ridgewood. Here is their e-mail address:
[email protected] 
>It seems Tim Brennan passed this email to some people. A friend forwarded it to me. I am a tad confused as RIDGE does not have TERC2. So what is the district showing NBC Nightly News at Ridge? Why not show Travell? Why not show Orchard? Is Ridge the poster child of an Everyday Math promotion?
I mean Everyday Math was voted AGAINST by the TEXAS STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION. Yet here in New Jersey, and more so in Ridgewood, we are becoming the poster district of reform math.
And we’ve heard from Somerville parents that in the past, yes Somerville is a designated “Everyday Math” school, but teachers there were more or less teaching beyond reform mathematics (throwing in an odd Everyday Math sheet now and again) but this year that seemed to have changed due to a directive from above.
What is Regina Botsford gaining? Notoriety? Money? Pearson Education reported record profits. Will Ridgewood be the center piece of a new add campaign and push of their products into other districts? Is Regina Botsford now attempting to sell Ridgewood Public School District to the Everyday Math camp?
The Wednesday night panel discussion is about “skill set for the 21st century” of which a parent at last night’s BOE meeting quite nicely asked – how in the world can you say you are preparing kids for types of jobs you do not know of yet?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOCwPU61BW0
or
Ridgewood parents need to wake from their slumber before this district is entrenched in reform math and constructivism beyond the capability of parental affluence and tutoring to save their children’s education.
Write to NBC and ask them to cover the math controversy in Ridgewood. Here is their e-mail address:
[email protected]
>
Got my Letter from Appraisal systems last week. No CLUE how my increased valuation compares to neighbors ( I know the current numbers so I want to make sure my increase of 57% was in line with theirs) All i did was add central AC since the last assessment. My dads home only went up 42%. Its ODD. When the ‘appraiser’ was here, I walked around with him to make sure he was accurate. He assessed me for a fireplace (which isnt there). I called to his attention and he supposedly removed it. Today, I called to check and sure enough, I am being charged for a fireplace. The woman on the phone cannot tell me what my neighbors new assessments are, nor what else is on my card. So she suggested and I accepted an appointment with this company and I can report back with the outcome. Unfortunately, as a homeowner, most will accept their assessments, without knowing whether or not the information used to base the assessment is accurate. That is a FLAW. The assessment for my beach house is available ONLINE, which ensures accuracy. With high taxes, I would not want any extra valuation. If I have an asphalt roof, I do not want to be assessed for slate. If I have linoleum floors, I do not want to be assessed for tile. If have regular countertops, I do not want to be assessed for granite. etc etc. Probably going to be too late for most since there is a ’10 day window’ from receipt of letter.
>Monday, January 28, 2008
BY BOB GROVES
A group of Ridgewood residents wants to make a change in village rules to help them thwart proposed expansion by The Valley Hospital.
Concerned Citizens of Ridgewood has applied to amend the village Master Plan and its hospital zone ordinance to “limit its impact on the community and preserve the village’s residential character.”
The group has also asked the village council and Planning Board to amend the ordinance to change the minimum distance — from the current 40 feet, to a proposed 80 feet — that hospital buildings must be set back from North Van Dien and Linwood avenues, on Valley’s borders.
Opponents have argued with Valley for months over its controversial $750 million plan to add an above-and-below parking deck, and replace two buildings with three new ones, increasing the hospital’s size by 67 percent.
Valley officials say the hospital needs to modernize to serve increasing numbers of patients. Opponents say Valley’s plan would encroach on the residential blocks on three neighboring streets, and Benjamin Franklin Middle School on the hospital’s north border.
The proposed new hospital buildings would tower 80 feet in a neighborhood of two-story homes. Construction would cause traffic, dust, noise and safety problems, critics of the project contend.
Concerned Citizens view their move to amend the village Master Plan as a preemptive strike against Valley which, they say, also intends to ask for ordinance changes that would permit its expansion.
“We beat them to the punch,” said Paul Gould, a member of Concerned Citizens who lives near the hospital campus. “This application we’ve launched is designed to use the law to preserve what we all hold dear in our village.”
Concerned Citizens supports Valley’s need to modernize to serve the local community, Gould said. “However, the scale of the proposed renewal is far greater than can be justified for this particular purpose,” he said.
The group has also charged that, when Ridgewood amended its rules in July to allow anyone to ask for changes in the village Master Plan, it was done to benefit Valley.
Valley’s renewal plans have received “overwhelming support throughout Ridgewood,” hospital officials said in a statement.
“We will continue to work with residents throughout Ridgewood as well as the surrounding neighborhood, to ensure that the hospital respects the character of our community, while providing the best and most advanced health care for our patients and their families,” the statement said.
The Ridgewood Planning Board is expected to acknowledge receipt of Concerned Citizens’ request for an amendment at its meeting on Tuesday, a spokesperson said.
E-mail: [email protected]
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 29, 2008
LAURIE GOODMAN ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY FOR RIDGEWOOD BOARD OF EDUCATION
Village resident Laurie Goodman has announced her candidacy for one of two open seats in the upcoming election for the Ridgewood Board of Education.
“I’m committed to improving communication between the community and the Board of Education,” Goodman said. “I believe members of the Board of Ed can do a lot more to ensure they are truly representing the wishes and goals of Ridgewood.”
Goodman cites the current controversy over math curriculum as an example of a situation where the Board of Ed has failed to maintain trust and a two-way flow of information. “To find themselves at odds with so many in the community, so far down the road of math curriculum development, is a good example of the disconnect between the Board and the public and parents,” Goodman said. “The ‘us versus them’ mentality is one we can work harder to eliminate. It’s counter-productive a real drain on time and resources,” she added.
Goodman continued, “With the challenges that continue to face us in terms of our budget decisions, state funding changes, rising costs and the difficult financial choices to come – not to mention the hiring of a new superintendent and two new principals – it’s vital that the Board of Ed listen to the community and ensure our priorities are clear and we’re all on the same page.”
As an active member of the Ridgewood community, Goodman has served as a member of the Ridgewood Community Task Force/Municipal Alliance, President of the Somerville Home & School Association, Secretary/Treasurer of Federated HSA, Member of Benjamin Franklin Middle School HSA, Co-Chair of Ridgewood High School Project Graduation 2007, and Member of the Ridgewood Public Schools QR2 Task Force on Parent & Public Engagement. In 2006 she led a community effort to establish the Dog Park at the Ridgewood Duck Pond. Goodman and her family are also active members of the Community Church of Upper Ridgewood.
When asked why voters should choose her for the Board of Education on April 15, Goodman replied, “As a mom, businessperson and volunteer, I have a reputation for being thoughtful, level-headed, honest and direct. I do my research and ask questions – before I form an opinion or make a decision. One of my strengths is the ability to focus a team’s attention and energy in order to solve problems and get things done. I would love the opportunity to bring that skill to the Board of Education.”
Laurie Goodman has lived in Ridgewood for 10+ years. She has been married to Paul Goodman for 20+ years. They have two children: Marya (2007 graduate of Ridgewood High School, currently at the University of New Hampshire) and Pete (8th grade student at Benjamin Franklin Middle School). Ms. Goodman is self-employed as a freelance writer and project manager. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications from the University of Denver and a Master’s degree from the University of Kansas in Soviet & East European Studies.
Village residents interested in finding out more about Laurie Goodman’s positions on issues in the Ridgewood Public Schools can visit her website at https://web.mac.com/lauriegood or send an email to [email protected].
>Information packets are now available for prospective candidates who are considering running for the Ridgewood Board of Education this spring. There will be two three-year seats on the ballot. This year’s school election is scheduled for Tuesday, April 15.
A “School Board Candidate Kit” can be obtained from the office of the Assistant Superintendent for Business, Angelo DeSimone, at the Education Center, 49 Cottage Place. The kit, published by the New Jersey School Boards Association, includes a sample nominating petition and information about legal qualifications for school board candidacy. Information about the New Jersey Ethics Act, important dates in the school election process and briefing sessions for school board candidates are also included in the kit.
Among other requirements, prospective candidates for the Board must be at least 18 years of age, a United States citizen, and a Ridgewood resident for at least one year prior to April 15.
The deadline for filing nominating petitions to run for positions on the Ridgewood Board of Education is Monday, Feb. 25, at 4 p.m.
Anyone seeking more information should contact the business office of the Ridgewood Public Schools at 201-670-2660.
>
Notwithstanding the current non-partisan makeup of government oversight in Ridgewood, the Bergen County Democratic Organization (BCDO) appears eager to have loyal members of their team either appointed or elected to influential positions within our municipal government operation. The Fly assumes this would ensure that loyal BCDO supporters are considered for lucrative professional services contracts, or as vendors of choice for “no bid required” municipal supplies.
It is rumored that potential candidate for Village Council Frank DelVecchio will be financially backed by the BCDO. DelVecchio, now a Deputy Police Chief in Fairview, was formerly Public Safety Director for the County of Bergen. It is also being rumored that the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority (NBCUA), headed by BCDO member Howard Hurwitz, will soon assume management of Ridgewood’s Waste Water Treatment Plant.
Mr. Hurwitz, who was appointed as Executive Director of NBCUA by Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney, is a key player in the BCDO. Hurwitz’s 2006 salary was reported as $108,700; his previous employer was NJ State Senator Joseph Coniglio. Hurwitz’s spouse, Lynne, is a noted Democratic Party activist. She currently holds a $78,332 appointed position in the County of Bergen’s Personnel Office.
The NBCUA does not currently maintain a public web site. Thus, information about its operation and management is not immediately accessible to either its subscribers, or taxpayers in communities it now services.
>By CHERYL K. CHUMLEY
[email protected]
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Five hundred and seventeen – that’s the number of parents and individuals as of Wednesday morning who have signed a petition to remove a math program that some call “fuzzy” from the Prince William County elementary school curriculum.
“I’m a parent of kindergarten and second-grade girls, so we’re just beginning to feel the pain,” said Alexis Miller, in reference to her eldest’s induction into Math Investigations, a new program that disdains rote memorization in favor of a more holistic, explanatory approach to problem-solving. “I tried at the beginning of the year to teach [the Math Investigations] method … and she doesn’t understand it. She gets so frustrated, she cries.”
For instance, Miller said, an actual homework assignment required her daughter show with drawings “all the different ways you can combine ones and tens to get to the number 47.”
So the finished assignment might include several pictures: One of a grouping of ten boxes as a single set, next to pictures of 37 individual, unattached boxes. Another, of a grouping of two sets of ten boxes, adjacent to pictures of 27 single boxes. And a third, of pictures of three separate sets of ten boxes, with 17 individual cubes drawn nearby – and so on, until all the possible combinations were reached. The lesson learned, according to Miller?
“It’s an exercise in futility,” she said. “I guess the goal is to frustrate. The focus is on regrouping, and I guess the thought is this is going to give some deeper understanding of the numbers.”
Other parents say they experience similarly.
“I have a second-grade daughter in Westridge, so she’s the lead guinea pig” for the program, said James Blanks. “On one homework problem she had recently, she had to determine the number of fingers and toes in her family and how she came up with that number.”
The idea, Blanks guessed, was to teach how to count by five. But the method, as well as the undefined goal of most Investigations problems, he added, leaves his daughter at a learning disadvantage and he would like to see the curriculum “completely dropped” for a more “traditional” approach that includes algorithms.
As such, Blanks has joined a list, posted at a new Web site, pwcteachmathright.com, of unhappy parents and concerned individuals who are petitioning the county’s School Board to remove Investigations from the math curriculum.
“In 2006,” the petition opens, “PWCS mandated countrywide implementation of a controversial ‘reform math’ program known as TERC Investigations in Number, Data and Space … Renowned mathematicians, university professors, engineers, scientists, parents and individuals who use, advance and rely upon mathematics in their careers and daily lives have condemned programs like TERC Investigations, which abandon teaching of proven math fundamentals to elementary school children.”
The petition, said one signer who has a third-grader at Mountain View Elementary School, will be presented to board members at the Feb. 6 meeting.
“I can see using this type of program as a supplement to help kids understand math in a different way,” said Alyson Satterwhite. “But if you don’t do the problem completely the way Math Investigations expects it to be done, you’re wrong.”
And part of the confusion, she explained, is that the system mixes math with language arts by requiring students not only solve the problem, but then explain with words how and why they arrived at that particular solution.
“It’s totally fuzzy,” Satterwhite said. “Investigations gets very wordy, and after my son solves the problem, it wants him to explain, ‘how do you know that’s the answer?’ Well, to my son, he says, ‘I just know.’ We call it touchy-feely math … and I think math needs to stay in the math department and language arts stay in the language arts department. It’s kind of hard for kids to throw adjectives at numbers.”
Satterwhite sees this math curriculum as similar to whole language programs that were popular in reading courses years ago – until it was found this means of replacing the sound-it-out style of phonics with whole-word memorization was a failed system.
From the school’s side, however, comes a long list of reasons to maintain the status quo of the elementary math curriculum.
“This is the program the educators have decided we’re going to use,” said School Board member Don Richardson, Gainesville District, “and I have confidence in that decision … We’re not going to determine our educational program by people making petitions but by the superintendent and the professionals making decisions and following it up with hard data.”
It’s premature at this point, Richardson said, to label Math Investigations a success or failure, because more time is needed for testing. In the meantime, he said, supplementation of the program should not even be considered an option because “it would skew the data to the point where you couldn’t get anything out of it,” where it couldn’t be determined if the test results could be attributed to Investigations or another math curriculum.
Moreover, Richardson said, the parental outcry with the current Investigations taught in the county’s schools stems more from perceived problems with the 2004 version of the curriculum – problems that have since been overcome in the currently used 2008 version.
The two board members with elementary school children learning the Math Investigations approach, as well as Dumfries District’s Betty Covington, were less cut and dry in their assessments of the program, though all nonetheless saw the logic with a wait-and-see attitude.
“I’m certainly very concerned parents are upset about Math Investigations,” said board chairman Milt Johns. “But we made the decision to go with the Investigations material after receiving some very compelling data from staff … and we are going to give them the respect to wait for the data” that conclusively shows whether the program is successful or not.
And Gil Trenum, the newly elected Brentsville representative who began his four-year term of office this month, had this to say: “I understand the approach of the Investigations program. I’m not overly impressed; however, I will reserve making a final decision. I think that’s only fair.”
Math supervisor Carol Knight, meanwhile, said in an e-mail that the level of public outcry for the Investigations program in no way changed her support.
It has, however, strengthened her resolve to “help parents understand the depth of the mathematics that their children will learn in using the multiple strategies that evolve from Investigations.”
One way the school systems fosters this understanding is through targeted instruction and free evening courses to teach parents how to help with Investigations homework. Aimed at promoting the benefits of the curriculum, the classes nonetheless only prove the opposite for some.
“I think if a math curriculum is constructed in such a way that you have to indoctrinate parents to understand it, there is something wrong with that program,” said Satterwhite. “At the elementary level, parents should be able to understand their children’s math homework without taking courses.”
>by Brendan Prunty/The Star-Ledger
Saturday January 26, 2008, 2:52 PM
It’s official: The Barclays Golf Tournament is crossing the river to New Jersey a year early.
According to a letter posted on Westchester Country Club’s internal site by the club’s President and obtained by The Star-Ledger, Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus will host the PGA Tour’s first event in the FedEx Cup playoff series in August.
An official announcement from the PGA Tour is expected this afternoon.
Ridgewood club President Alex Khowaylo could not immediately be reached for comment.
The move to Ridgewood ends a 41-year relationship between the PGA Tour and Westchester Country Club. However, as part of the settlement to move the tournament to New Jersey this summer, the Tour has agreed to return to Westchester at least one more time in either 2010, 2011 or 2012.
Prior to discussions of the move to Ridgewood this summer, the Tour had already decided to hold the 2009 Barclays at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City.
>From The Record, Saturday, January 26, 2008
BY EVONNE COUTROS
RIDGEWOOD — A 29-year-old female instructional aide at the high school was charged with child abuse after she was found with beer and suspected marijuana while in a parked car with a 16-year-old boy.
A police officer on patrol about 10 p.m. Wednesday saw Lindsay M. Murphy of Mahwah and the boy, a student at the high school, sitting in the car in the eastern section of the duck pond parking lot on East Ridgewood Avenue.
When the officer asked why they were there, Murphy, in the driver’s seat, said the two were talking. Murphy told the officer she was 25, said Detective Capt. Keith Killion.
“The male passenger was asked the same question, to which he replied that he was 17,” Killion said. He is 16, police said.
Murphy told police she was at a basketball game at the high school and that the juvenile in the passenger’s seat had concerns about his midterm exams and wanted to talk.
Murphy, an instructional aide, was asked if she was a teacher and she replied, “Yes,” police said.
Further questioning revealed additional discrepancies in their stories, Killion said. Police found beer in the car and a substance believed to be marijuana.
Murphy was charged with child abuse and neglect because of her instructional-aide status and the teen’s juvenile status, Killion said.
The two were charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance. Murphy received an additional charge of having an open or unsealed alcoholic beverage in the car.
Murphy was released pending a court appearance, and the juvenile was released to his sister, Killion said.
>I thought you might be interested in Regina’s whereabouts this coming March 15, 2008 through March 17, 2008.
Reginia Speaks at ASCD Conference …click here
She’ll be speaking at the annual conference of the ASCD with Willa Spicer, New Jersey Department of Education, Trenton
Topic: Using Performance Assessments to Support Learning: State and District Results
OK, sounds pretty harmless…
But take a closer look at the title of the conference:
2008 Annual Conference and Exhibit Show
reinventing schools
( click here to see the ASCD Conference Logo )
… reinventing schools…hmmmmm
Now take a closer look at the sponsoring organization…
The ASCD has evolved into quite the aggressive elitist advocacy group.
Don’t take my word for it, check out their website…
Here are some online professional development courses that they offer:
ASCD: From Success to Significance …click here
Which contains these lessons:
Lesson 1 — Professional Advocacy
• Think about what it means to be an “advocate.”
• Explore how others have become advocates.
• Consider how to advocate for best practices in education.
Lesson 2 — Advocacy and Influence at ASCD …click here
• Consider how ASCD’s Educator Advocates influence policy.
• Learn about the LEAP Institute.
• Explore how to join your voice with ASCD’s.
Lesson 3 — The Whole Child
• Define “whole child.”
• Explore how a school can nurture the whole child.
Lesson 4 — From Successful to Significant
• Explore what “significance” means for ASCD.
• Consider how you can contribute to ASCD’s effort to become significant.
ASCD: Organization, Community, and Commitment …click here
Which contains these lessons:
Lesson 1 — Why ASCD Is Unique
• Explore what makes ASCD different from other education organizations.
• Learn how to describe ASCD to those nonmembers we wish to influence.
Lesson 2 — How ASCD Governs and Adopts Positions …click here
• Examine ASCD’s current governance structure.
• Explore how ASCD positions get adopted.
Lesson 3 — ASCD’s Commitment to Student Health and Civic Engagement
• Consider ways that “success for each learner” (ASCD’s mission statement) refers to more than strictly academic success.
• Identify specific programs that demonstrate ASCD’s commitment to student health and civic engagement.
Lesson 4 — Ensuring a Diverse, Worldwide ASCD Community
• Identify ASCD’s guidelines for its worldwide work.
• Explore how ASCD seeks to create a more diverse and engaged membership.
ASCD: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow …click here
Which contains these lessons:
Lesson 1 — Setting the Context for Leadership
• Explore the early history of ASCD.
• Consider the leadership opportunities within the organization.
Lesson 2 — Enduring Issues …click here
• Identify the enduring issues promoted by ASCD.
• Explore how ASCD addresses these issues today.
Lesson 3 — Our Vision and Beliefs
• Review ASCD’s vision and belief statements.
• Explore actions based on each belief statement.
Lesson 4 — Our Mission and Goals
• Consider how the mission statement reflects the beliefs and goals of the Association.
• Identify the goals of the Association, as articulated in the Strategic Plan.
And let’s not for get the MATH courses that they are offering…
For Example…
Mathematics for Grades 3-5 …click here
Which is full of “non-math”… click through and check it out.
Well kids, it looks like Regina is a bigger crusader than has been revealed thus far… She’s on a jihad to reinvent our schools and has a massive organization behind her for support… She’s a true believer.
>Gov. Jon Corzine insisted yesterday his office had nothing to do with the arrest of conservative activist Steve Lonegan at a town hall meeting in Cape May County, even though the mayor of Middle Township said local police acted at the direction of the governor’s staff. “All I know is they were doing what they were told to do,” Mayor F. Nathan Doughty, a Democrat, said. Asked who had told them what to do, he said, “The governor’s people.” Corzine was adamant in rejecting Doughty’s claim about Saturday’s arrest at Middle Township High School. Lonegan was arrested moments before the start of the town meeting at which the governor was to explain his plan to increase tolls on the state’s major highways. (Howlett and Margolin, Star-Ledger)
Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean, Jr. wants the state Attorney General to investigate the possible violation of Steve Lonegans first amendment rights. Lonegan, a former Bogota Mayor and possible 2009 candidate for Governor, was arrested on Sunday outside Middle Township High School where Gov. Jon Corzine was holding a town meeting. (Editor, PolitickerNJ.com)
“After a couple days of silence on the subject, Middle Township’s finest released a statement Monday saying Lonegan and a fellow protester were arrested for trespassing because they “attempted to enter the facility carrying signs … in violation of a posted school policy.”
However, video of the incident appears to contradict the police account. It shows a policeman telling Lonegan to remove signs from school grounds entirely. After Lonegan calmly refuses, the police handcuff him and put him in the back of a cruiser.”(The Record of Bergen County)
The “Asset Monetization” Questions the Governor Doesn’t Want To Answer
Question: Will you be borrowing more than $4 billion dollars to cover principle and interest on the $38 billion you want to borrow, until after the 2009 election?
Answer: Governor Corzine wants to bond $38 billion (the largest borrowing scheme by any state) as early as this June. Bond holders will expect interest starting immediately. However, the governor is delaying the toll increases necessary to pay this debt for two years, or until after the election in 2009. To cover this cost, he will borrow approximately $4 billion as part of the $38 billion. Toll payers will pay for this political ploy for seventy five years into the future.
This is called “capitalized interest” and would be acceptable practice if the money was being borrowed to build a needed road that did not exist and tolls would not come until after it was built. Governor Corzine recognizes the political and economic impact and is borrowing this huge sum to delay the increases until after the election.
Question: Will you be using $16 billion of this new debt to reduce the state’s existing debt from $33 billion to $16 billion? Isn’t this borrowing Peter to pay Paul? Will you guarantee taxpayers the current state debt will be cut in half?
Answer: The Governor is not telling the taxpayers that he is poised to bond another $11 billion in state debt over the next year or so!. Section D3 of the State Debt Report illustrates the Governor’s intention to issue this debt that is “Authorized but not yet paid.” The State’s actual debt will jump more than $11 billion while the Governor is bonding his $38 billion in Toll Debt.
Question: How will the state save money by paying down some of its existing debt with new debt?
Answer: We won’t. The Governor will be paying off shorter term, lower interest bonds with longer term (75 year) higher interest bonds. This is equivalent to refinancing your home by replacing a twenty five year mortgage at 4% with a seventy five year mortgage at 7% and just putting your debts off to the next two generations.
