Tag: Ridgewood Moms and dads

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Today (8/30), the Ledger reported on the Department of Education’s latest report on school violence, vandalism, weapons and substance abuse. The report contains some very troubling news for Ridgewood. This is regardless of the fact that the reporting across districts and counties may be flawed, though not flawed enough to render the report irresponsible. It would be wise for administrators to pay close heed to these findings and consider what they have done in the past that either has not worked, or may have inadvertently exacerbated the problem. Here’s a comparative look of four districts in the report: Glen Rock, Hackensack, Ridgewood and Newark.

Glen Rock, with an enrollment of 2,471 students, reported a total number of 8 incidences of the above
Hackensack City, with an enrollment of 5,059, students reported a total number of 24 incidences
Ridgewood, with an enrollment of 5,553 students, reported a total of 95 incidences.
Newark City, with an enrollment of 41,855 students, reported a total of 414 incidences (unless you’re terc impaired, you know that that would extrapolate to more incidences by percentage in Ridgewood).

Could it be that Glen Rock, Hackensack and Newark are drastically underreporting or does Ridgewood have more than a Starbucks’s problem? Regardless, our administrators owe Ridgewood parents and taxpayers a revealing discussion of this issue rather than the usual explaining away of what the numbers mean. The full report is available at:

https://www.state.nj.us/education/schools/vandv/0506/appende1.pdf

>1. One find day a Travell teacher attended a program or seminar or something headlined by an expert education entity;
2. The teacher is treated to a marketing campaign (masqueraded, of course, as unbiased, expert information) on the wonders of the new, new math a/k/a terc with all the buzz words thrown in for emphasis;
3. The teacher is completely sold and comes back to Travell extolling the wonders and virtues of reform math and, especially, terc;
4. The principal is eager show leadership skills by bringing an innovative program to his school–not unlike the way Orchard’s principal brought the teacher’s college reading/writing program to the district after first putting it in place at his school. Principals get lots of kudos for stuff like this;
5. At Travell, the principal gets other teachers on board and training begins. Soon, terc is implemented with little supplementation of real math because the “belief” quotient is still high;
6. Meanwhile, back at Cottage Place, Botsford is looking for a way to make math in the district less of a patchwork quilt and is a reform babe herself. She loves terc and looks for the next school that will take it on–given our penchant for school-based management, it’s one school at a time;
7. Orchard is the perfect fit because it has long been used as the experimentation school as a result of its small size and very compliant HSA;
8. Orchard’s principal is a mathematician and feels that he can handle any program, even one he must mitigate since he has the expertise to diminish the negative by product of terc. He signs on, gaining friends in high places. This is the second phase of a plan to next roll out terc to Somerville, then Ridge, Hawes and Willard. At the middle school level, BF gets a go and GW is soon to follow, before wrapping everything up implementing reform math at the high school. Hallelulia, Botsford sees the seeds of success in her main task just around the horizon;
9. Parents at Travell begin to see some of their once bright children, starting to struggle and complain about the stupid math that’s not like math at all. These parents begin to raise the issue within their school;
10. The principal, knowing that he is a key part of a far grander scheme, is not receptive to a “few” parents wanting to alter his exceptional math experiment. The teachers are still extolling the virtues of terc and the Cottage Place administrators–blinded because they are not on the front lines–have invested very high levels of “belief” in the program;
11. Travell’s scores are not improving. In fact, they are getting worse;
12. Administrators respond by stepping on the terc gas to increase the teacher training and bury the kids in reform math propaganda. “Belief” is winning out over common sense and the long range plan to have reform math as the district-wide curricula for math;
13. Parents, suffused with research, charts and expert opinion from high end mathematicians, bring their concerns out to the public-at-large and to the BOE.
14. The BOE turns to its administrators to explain its wonderful plan and “better communicate” the terc beliefs to parents, who obviously missed it. Parents, however, are not falling for platitudes, nor for the sales pitch on the package;
15. The BOE tries to appease parents by showing how well students are meeting the state standards–hoping to defend against parents claiming that a bad program has failed numerous grades of children–even their own child. The BOE has a plan to strengthen its forces with a superintendent steeped in reform math and, therefore, better able to protect board members from the growing wrath of parents, since Botsford is not adept at the task;
16. Made aware of the math fight, the superintendent gets cold feet and decides not to come. BOE members are shattered that they must now defend themselves without their incoming general. Unable to acknowledge that terc is bad (because it would be an admittance that kids who had it, paid the ultimate price for their bad judgment), they plan to fight on with their state standards strategy;
17. The strategy backfires as parents recognize and point out publicly that the state standards are abysmal in NJ. The BOE and its administrators have no other plan and the district-wide rollout of reform math stops dead in its tracks;
18. New interim principal is hired and he has to clean up the mess. He recognizes (and is able to admit) that reform math won’t serve ALL children in high school. This also undermines the claim of administrators that this math was for ALL children;
19. Since it’s not yet at the high school, reform math is dead on arrival there. That effectively eliminates the need to preach its virtues for the middle schools and, it will follow, at the elementary schools;
20. Look for reform math to slowly fade out of Travell and Orchard, where it never realy ruled the day. Look for CMP2 to slowly slide back to real math at the middle schools;
21. Don’t look for the BOE to ever admit that it made a mistake. The board could never begin to pay the price for those children it messed up with their well meaning but devastating terc experiment.

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>These are some of the most ridiculous and selfish comments I have read on this blog. I am continually amazed by the arrogance and selfishness of people in Ridgewood, who tout the character of our town and demand the highest standards of service and resources, yet are unwilling to pay for them. Whether a it is a new field, a new service or a new building, how many times have we heard something like, “it wasn’t like that in the 1950’s, so we don’t need it now”.

That is an absurd rationale and illustrates a fundamental lack of understanding and appreciation of civic planning, municipal management and community responsibility.Any rational and thoughtful Ridgewood resident wants a local hospital that can offer the best medical care possible. There may be situations that require patients to seek specialists in NYC or elsewhere. But, that shouldn’t mean we force Valley to make due with antiquated and inappropriate zoning and require all Ridgewood residents to live with the consequences of long-term declining services. I hope my family never needs Valley’s services. But, I want to know that it is there if we need it and I certainly don’t want to “have to go” to Hackensack or NYC to get the best care, if my family has a medical emergency.

I live near RHS and the campus buildings, which overshadow our homes (and from some views have a very “institutional” look) have not diminished our neighborhood. Nor will Valley’s plans diminish the neighborhoods around the hospital compared to today’s appearance. It will certainly not diminish the view from BF field. The eye sore there is the back side of the school, BF’s parking lot, dumpsters and broken fences, not Valley Hospital. In fact, the trees that shield the field from Valley Hospital may be the most attractive view from the field.Like our school system, Valley Hospital is a valuable asset that enhances the quality of life in the community and distinguishes Ridgewood from less desirable neighboring communities. Also like our school system, it requires periodic improvements and upgrades and deserves our support for well planned fiscally responsible change.

>Dr. Brennan will be discussing and updating the K-8 MATH RESPONSIVENESS PLAN at this Monday’s BOE meeting. In addition, Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida, facilitator, will provide an update to the Board on the progress of this same plan. All interested parties should plan on attending and speak during public comment. The more voices heard, the better!

>I know this is the wrong place to ask this, but is that above comment correct? Did the town really give this church $10,000 to tear down the house? I called Village Hall today, asked the question, and I got transferred for 20 minutes… engineering, zoning, parks dept, etc. No one would comment.

Not sure of the answer. The word I got was that the Church was paying just over $20K for the job. However, the Church was not obligated to fill in the hole left behind, nor to do other site work in preparation for the property being turned into a park ,perhaps the $10K covers that work; i.e., filling in the hole, leveling the land, and removing the fence.

>Valley Hospital is seeking to change the Village’s Master Plan and the H-Zone ordinances to allow them to increase the size of the structures on their 15.4 acre Ridgewood campus.

The two stage, multi-year, $750 million proposal is to increase the total Gross Floor area by 71%; reduce the building setbacks to 40 feet on all four sides of the property (from the present effective 144 ft); increase on-site parking by 400 spaces and to increase building heights to 80 feet (56 ft + 24 ft of mechanicals).

After examining the proposal, over 400 residents formed a group called the Concerned Residents of Ridgewood to fight the proposal. They have a website www.stopvalley.com. The group believes in quality healthcare, but not at the expense of the village. They believe that, if the proposal is allowed to pass without amendment, the unique character of Village will be destroyed and Ridgewood will become just another “hospital town”.

A major concern is the permanent nature of the proposed changes to the Master Plan and Ordinances. If the H-Zone ordinance changes are allowed to pass, the hospital will be able to continue building beyond their current proposal without the needing to gain variance approval at the public Board Meetings – only site plan approval.

If the Master Plan changes are approved, any future variance changes beyond what is requested by the Hospital today will be harder to oppose as the proposed changes to the Master Plan will render the Village “Hospital expansion friendly”.

The specific issues are:

Proposed changes to the Master Plan and H-Zone ordinances that will change the Character of the Village
The number of licensed beds will increase by 3, but the size of the hospital will be 374,333 sq feet at a cost of $750 million – will the health insurance companies pay the resulting higher fees?
-There will be more buildings and less open space.
-A reduction in house values of the surrounding neighborhoods
-Possible road widening creating safety and traffic issues
-Ben Franklin Middle School is right next to the hospital, Travell Elementary School only one block away and students transverse Van Dien to RHS. There are significant safety and quality of -life issues for those students during the 3+ years of proposed construction.

>Geez! I was an HSA President at Travell when TERC was brought in. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. As President and a member of Travell’s HSA, we didn’t have the luxury of “voting” for TERC. It was handed to us on a silver platter with many promises of how “life changing” it would be for our kids. It wasn’t an option that we could say yes or no to as I recall. I worked hard as President all the while registering my complaints that we shouldn’t have to pay for air conditioning and even voting “No” to the budget…which by the way I have never voted for. During my tenure it was true the Superintendent’s office gave me a letter to distribute to all parents after I signed it but it did not say to vote “FOR” the budget it just said “TO” vote. Anyone who came to my meetings should have been very clear about where I stood on the budget (which I spoke against at Federated meetings – much to the chagrin of Dr. Porter)and other expenses the parents were expected to pick up because the budget couldn’t support them. I feel really badly that some parents may have felt excluded by the “clique” of the HSA that was never MY intention as President. I was always grateful for the support (financial or otherwise) of all of our parents. I am very disappointed that so many parents feel this way, I’m sorry for that. Please don’t let any of that discourage you from supporting the Math Moms with their hardwork in getting TERC taken out of the district or getting involved in any way you feel comfortable. This system will only change if people are willing to speak up and change it.

>I am a teacher of mathematics in a metropolitan school district. I have witnessed over the years the down spiral in quality of curricular resource materials for mathematics. I have found it increasingly necessary to enhance, augment, and compensate (for) the materials with which I have been expected to teach. The politics by which inferior resource materials have been foisted on math teachers (and therby students and parents) is insidious and anti-educational. State, district, school, and corporate administrators (attempt to) pressure, misdirect, and manipulate teachers to buy into the math flavor fad of the day. Teacher input is all but ignored unless (of course) it reinforces what the powers-that-be wish to be heard and/or publicized.

Administrative media access so highly filters the information which is output to the public that the quite intelligent and well-meaning parents, who want only to advocate what is best for their children, are often undertandably confused by the discrepancy between administrative lip-service and academic results (e.g. WASL). Being that the math WASL has been all but diefied (unjustifiably) as an academic measure, parental angst becomes preyed upon by smooth talking demagogues offering a reformist concoction of snake oil and mediocrity to remedy a near-disaster of their creation. The apple of mediocrity will always be mediocrity regardless of how well is polished or spiffed up by the minions of fuzzy mathematics. Each year the number of students arriving to my classroom without basic and essential arithmetic skills in place
increases. Many students cannot do simple arithmetic operations without a calculator.

Basic multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, fraction, decimal, exponent, and percent facts are often just not in place… the simple stuff! Often, students are recommended from middle school into high school courses for which they are either less than adequately prepared or for which they are not prepared at all. TERC & CMP exposure and/or induced calculator “dependency” (in elementary and middle school are the usual culprits. Those students who arrive and are indeed ready to advance must then patiently endure the requisite review process in order to bring as many of their classmates up to speed as possible. The math reality… it is insufficient that a student can merely perform calculations on a calculator. Unless an inculcated arithmetic process is operative (consciously or unconsciously) in the student’s reasoning, use of the calculator becomes little better than a crap shoot. It is just as important to have a sense of when an answer is not in the ballpark as when it is. Without a developed sense of knowing the difference, one answer might often be just as well as any other answer.

If I had a Lotto ticket for each time I heard a student remark that an answer was correct because “that’s what the calculator says”, I would have won the lottery long ago.Calculators do not speak. Calculators do not have an opinion. Calculators calculate. (A hammer does not suggest where to place the nail. That is the carpenter’s job.)Good “basic math skills” supply the basis for good mathematical reasoning. Calculators cannot reason. Reasoning is the student’s job. CMP, TERC, IMP, CPM, Core Plus, Everyday Math, etc,… all fail the student. The fundamental cognitive tools of mathematical reasoning (basic skills) are abandoned by these curricula. Rather, these curricula nurture a handicap… a dependence upon the superficial and uninsightful non-reasoning tool, the calculator.Calculators do have their uses. But those uses first need to be tempered by experience… the experience of an acquired comprehensive body of knowledge and interpretive skill. As an educator, I do my best to guide my students through the process of acquiring that mathematical experience. Such experience will surely serve them qualitatively far better (than mere calculator “dependence”) as they progress through their education and, insofar as choices are made, through their lives.

The advocates and purveyors of fluffy math curricula do not seem to be genuinely concerned with the academic and future well-being of students. Such advocates and purveyors seem only to be concerned with the promotion of their ideological agenda(s). I believe that the next step forward should start with one (or more) step(s) backward. Fluffy math texts (and corporate interference) should be scrapped regardless of administrative or governmental pressures. The true educators (parents and teachers) should take back the educational system and do what is right for the kids. Thank you.

NOTE: My point of view tends to get me into hot water with school and district administrators. It is a small price to pay.

>Whether we are talking about our fire department, police department, other VOR departments, or our school system, it seems nepotism is alive and well in Ridgewood or is it? It seems that this topic has ruffled some feathers.

Some families in the village have a proud history of public service but offering employment to a relative, despite the fact that there are others who are better qualified and willing to perform the job, would be considered a form of nepotism.

Hundreds of applications are received when an opening occurs in our fire department, police department or in our school system. When a relative is hired for one of these open positions it is only natural to question whether or not he/she was the best candidate.

Does knowing someone or being related to someone get you the job? Does nepotism create an environment conducive to preferential treatment to family members? When relatives work in the same department or unit do work-related issues arise that can negatively affect that department or unit? Or is it simply a matter of good people looking to carry a tradition of public service ?

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The idea for Life Bath & Body came about in late 2003 when I was in
between jobs as Editor-In-Chief of Remix magazine and Editor of
Future Music US. I wanted to open a store that was like the boutiques
I encountered when I traveled to England and France, carrying the
products that I loved but that were hard to find over here. More
specifically, the store is inspired by the shops lining Jermyn Street
in London’s St. James district (Floris, the numerous gentlemens’
stores specializing in badger brushes and safety razors) and soap
stores in the tiny villages all over Provence.

When I first envisioned the store, I was living in Los Angeles. Soon
afterwards I helped launch the US-edition of Future Music magazine,
which eventually led to me moving back East in February 2006 to work
in the company’s New York office. In January 2007 Future Music ceased
publication and I was moved to an editorial position for Guitar One
magazine. Then in April 2007 that title closed along with several
other publications and I was laid off. Looking back at the last 20
years, I realized I had six jobs that each required me to relocate
between LA, San Francisco and New York (basically I’ve been a
magazine editor for publications like Guitar Player and Guitar World,
and I’ve also done artist relations for Digidesign, the developer of
Pro Tools recording software).

Of course, I fell in love with North Jersey and I was determined to
settle down my roots here once and for all. My only viable course of
action was to open my own store, and I knew that Ridgewood would be
the best place to do it. My wife checked the real estate listings and
found a location on North Broad Street that was perfect for opening
the store that we envisioned.

The idea behind Life Bath & Body is to bring a little of the
sensations of Europe to Ridgewood, especially the smells (if anyone
makes jabs about Jersey’s distinct aroma, tell them to visit the
store for a different perspective).

The store carries products from:

* photos by ArtChick

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AMARANTH flower shop
7 North Broad Street
(lower Level)Suite 3

Been here 9 years

(201)493-2009

11-5 or latter just call out making deliveries at 3pm

* photos by ArtChick

>The individual wanted in connection with Saturday night’s aggravated assault
on Police Officer Sean Amoruso was arrested at 10:12 PM this evening on
Steilen Avenue in Ridgewood. The arresting officer was Detective Sergeant
William Amoruso.

The suspect, a male juvenile who resides on Steilen Avenue, was transported
to Ridgewood Police Headquarters for processing. He was accompanied by his
father.

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>If the Fly’s memory is correct, an assistant manager at the East Ridgewood Avenue Starbucks was arrested earlier this year for allegedly selling drugs in the franchise’s rear parking lot. This is the same location that Ridgewood Police Officer Sean Amoroso was assaulted on Saturday night. Officer Amoroso was trying to detain an individual suspected of being engaged in some sort of narcotics related activity.

These two incidents make the Fly wonder what the story is with this particular Starbucks location? Are these two incidents coincidental/totally unrelated, or is the Ridgewood Avenue Starbucks an established gathering point for drug sellers and buyers? If so, should Ridgewood’s police department enlist help from the Bergen County Narcotics Squad to clean up the mess there?