The good school-expensive home dilemma June 13, 2014, 10:00 a.m. EDT
Peter and Megan Dale of San Francisco say their two-bedroom condominium in Cole Valley, just south of the Haight-Ashbury District, is starting to feel cramped; their two school-aged children share a single room. But they have no plans to leave the condo, which they bought for $990,000 in 2007. The reason: The nearby public school is rated a “9” out of 10 by GreatSchools.org, an Oakland, Calif.-based education-advice website.
A good local school can be one of the biggest drivers of home prices in a community. And parents hoping to get their children the best education possible are often willing to stretch their finances for a pricey home in a good school district, sometimes taking out ambitious loans. When the Dales bought their condo, they took out an interest-only jumbo mortgage that allowed them to put down just 3% instead of the usual 20%. When the market fell, they briefly found themselves underwater on the home. And they face hefty payments ahead when their loan resets to a principal and interest payment. Mr. Dale, a 42-year-old software designer, says the headaches are worth it for the great school and a short commute to his Montgomery Street office: “Some things are just more important than money,” he said.
In the past year, relatively low rates for jumbo loans have made buying in expensive school districts a little easier for some borrowers. Even so, some jumbo borrowers say they have trouble competing in markets where cash-only deals are commonplace. Anna Sikha, who lives in San Francisco with her husband, needed jumbo financing when they shopped for a home in the same neighborhood as the Dales in the hope of getting their 3-year-old son into same school. They lost out on several homes to all-cash buyers. “We were constantly getting outbid. It was so depressing that we thought about renting,” Mrs. Sikha, who works for a biotechnology company, said. Ultimately, they bought a condo in the neighborhood for $1.25 million, with the help of a jumbo loan.
Mark Livingstone, president of Cornerstone First Financial, a mortgage broker in Washington, D.C’s Georgetown neighborhood says he often needs to write aggressive preapproval letters for his jumbo-loan clients that waive appraisals and financing contingencies in neighborhoods such as Bethesda, Md., that have highly rated public schools. “Families are willing to pay more for a home to get into a well-rated public school. They see themselves saving $10,000 to $20,000 year in private-school tuition,” Mr. Livingstone said.
JUNE 12, 2014 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2014, 5:42 PM Lisa Baney
To the Editor:
Let me start by saying I could never be a Planning Board member, but if I were, I would be so tired. Over the past 14 months, they have had to attend 26 sometimes very long hearings, and listen to and dissect thousands of pages of testimony focusing on details and information that any normal human could scarcely nail down. All in response to a prestigious applicant, Valley Hospital, and its application for a master plan amendment that would allow its near-doubling of size at its location at South Van Dien Avenue next to the Benjamin Franklin Middle School.
It has become evident through this process that there are many different ways to slice and dice the data. By that, I mean a litany of measurements such as square footage, lot coverage, floor area ratios, shadow lines, changes of buffers, heights and setbacks at various sections of the buildings and property. Moreover, the board members have needed to distinguish each of these measures according to the current 2014 expansion proposal, the former 2010 proposal and what exists today. Add differing testimony on hospital beds needed, numbers and types of trucks during specific years and stages of construction, possible impact on child safety and schools, and a magnitude of other information – most importantly village character.
If I were a Planning Board member, I would see three things through all these nights.
1. Land use is primary as the basis of a master plan change.
2. As a key burden of proof, the applicant for the master plan change has not substantiated why it is absolutely necessary to conduct this degree of expansion on its main hospital campus. Valley affirms that this scale of expansion, at its current location, is the only way to well serve both our village and region, and that it is cost-prohibitive to relocate additional services, re-think its bed counts here, or follow other paths to modernize – based on elements of a business plan that it chooses not to make clear.
3. There is more than enough reason to believe that the detriments of this permanent change to our village outweigh the positives, and that the hospital has not made a convincing case to the contrary.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-letters-to-the-editor/letter-planning-board-members-have-much-to-consider-1.1034646#sthash.6Qg61KBE.dpuf
JUNE 12, 2014 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 2014, 5:43 PM Melinda Wagner
To the editor:
When my husband and I began attending Planning Board meetings years ago, we were deeply annoyed with Valley Hospital, whose officials had already drawn up elaborate plans to double in size while neglecting to consult the taxpayers who would have to endure years of construction, and its permanent aftermath (to date, residents have yet to be consulted).
More than eight years later – after countless meetings, thousands of dollars, and numerous, stressful hours, my family is no longer annoyed. We are furious!
Valley wants to place a structure the size of Paramus Park Mall in the middle of a neighborhood of single-family homes, three schools, and playing fields – an area traversed by many hundreds of children daily. In order to get their way, Valley officials have spun, sliced and diced the “facts,” treated residents with disrespect, and have consistently failed to address the matter at hand. It is this last point that I find most infuriating. Indeed, every single argument in support of this gargantuan project has been specious, beside the point, and misleading – no matter how compelling, heartwarming or dire.
Reader says It does not take much to turn a real estate market and we are likely on the tipping point.
Perhaps the most interesting indication of this is the No Valley and No Apartment signs that appear on the lawns of houses that have recently sold to young families moving into town. They came here for the schools and the neighborhood feel of the town. Then, they learn that what they just bought into is under the threat of the massive hospital and apartment complexes. Having just sunk their young fortunes into new homes, they are justifiably worried.
Think now of what happens if that worry becomes known to those currently looking. Through this blog, for instance, or newspaper coverage of the planning board hearings or letters to the editors. Real estate can very quickly take a nose dive in Ridgewood when towns in close proximity offer almost as much without the looming risk.
If you were 30-35 again, with two young children and enough money to buy a house in Ridgewood, and there was a chance Ridgewood was going to turn into something more along the lines of the hustle and bustle found in a small city sometime in the next 5 to 10 years, would you risk your hard earned down payment money on Ridgewood property? And for those of us in the 45 to 55 range, on the verge of being empty nesters, do we risk riding the property market to the bottom when we can cash out now?
No, make no mistake, Ridgewood is very much on a precipice formed by the intersection of a monolithic hospital concerned about its future revenue stream, developers who want to increase their profits and well meaning Villagers who are buying into false arguments and fears generated by the Hospital and developers.
file photo by Maura McMahon DeNicola in Ridgewood PJ Blogger with Joe Kyrillos
Post-CA Tenure Decision, Kyrillos Seeks Repeat in New Jersey Jun. 11 Education, Joe Kyrillos, National, Uncategorized 1 comment
By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Joe Kyrillos at 2012 RNC in Tampa, Florida
Following an earth-shattering decision by the California state court striking down that state’s tenure law, state Senator Joe Kyrillos (R-Monmouth) says he’s reaching out to an advocacy group involved in the West Coast case to help accomplish the same result in New Jersey.
He’ll start by re-introducing S-2171, “The School Children First Act.”
“This legislature should seize this opportunity and momentum to pass full tenure reform to improve education and lower property taxes in New Jersey,” Sen. Kyrillos said in a statement released by the Senate GOP office. “This overhaul bill allows public school districts to best serve their students and communities by ensuring only the best teachers, administrators and staff members are the ones educating and nurturing our next generation.”
Past efforts have been examples of tokenism at best and a waste of time for the more cynical among you.
Kyrillos says his legislation would accomplish the following:
· Eliminate last-in, first-out (LIFO) seniority protections that force schools to ignore educator effectiveness and layoff high-performing younger teachers, instead of more expensive, ineffective ones;
· Require school districts to adopt merit-based compensation schedules, whereby public school employees are paid and retained based on their performances, contributions and growth;
· Allow school principals to assign teachers to classrooms where they will be effective; and
· Alleviate tenure-law obstacles for school districts seeking to become more efficient by consolidating or merging services.
It’s a tough issue, Save Jerseyans.
Why? Because it’s easy enough to say “let’s reward good teachers and reform/penalize the bad ones,” but how do you effectively evaluate teacher performance when the good teachers find their classrooms filled with the most challenging students on an annual basis?
There’s also an emerging consensus among everyone NOT in government that testing is close to useless.
School choice is the only solution. The free market is the only fair way to judge any professional’s abilities. Anything else is probably a net negative for hardworking teachers and a net neutral for the kids we’re trying to help. Just one former student’s opinion…
Why I’m pulling my kids out of public school By Lynne Rigby Sunday, June 8, 2014 6:21pm
Lynne Rigby with her husband and five children. “Today’s public school atmosphere is all about accountability and not about the actual needs of the child,’’ she writes in her open letter to Gov. Rick Scott and school officials. “Not everything in education can be quantified.’’ Lynne Rigby photo
Editor’s note: More than 150,000 people have read a posting byLynne Rigby, a 40-year-old Seminole County mother of five children, on her website, lynnerigby.com. Rigby, a former teacher, addressed it to Gov, Rick Scott and Seminole school officials. The following is a condensed version.
I am a parent of five children in Seminole County schools, aged 4 to 16. My husband and I are deeply embedded in this community. We are both successful products of Lake Brantley High School. I graduated from the University of Georgia in 1995 and came back to Seminole to teach kindergarten; he is currently the pitching coach for the Lake Brantley varsity baseball team. We stayed here so our kids would be blessed with a similar educational experience.
This year has been completely disheartening for us. You see, I’ve been okay with FCAT … show what you know, I get it … some sort of accountability. That was until this year. My third-grade son, Jackson, has had mostly As, a scattering of Bs through his Bear Lake Elementary career, much like his brothers. However, he has had the Discovery Education tests added to his school year. I saw his score on DE in first grade and it was scary low, in the 20s. But his teacher said he was doing fine. Same thing in 2nd grade, though knowing that FCAT was looming, I began to panic a bit.
We read out loud together each night through the summer, talked about the books as we read, and I believed that would pay off on the first DE test of third grade because he was doing really well. I was wrong. His first DE test was similar to others, but now his teachers started panicking because their pay depends on it. He was sent to remedial LEAP and ultimately a math pullout group. All the while he has had mostly As and a few Bs.
Disconnect. That’s the word that plays over in my head. How can he do all his homework on his own, never struggling with any topic and get such a low percentile on a test? Then, an epiphany. What is the validity of this test? How does it relate to our curriculum?
JUNE 10, 2014, 5:17 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2014, 5:17 PM BY CHRISTOPHER DE VINCK THE RECORD
Christopher de Vinck is the language arts supervisor at Clifton High School in New Jersey. His 13th book is “Moments of Grace” (Paulist Press).
LET’S CREATE a national program called “No Child Left behind,” and flood the schools with standardized tests. Let’s change the name and call it “Race to the Top.” Let’s put kids in uniforms. Let’s increase the school day. Let’s pay teachers less money. Let’s pay teachers more money. Let’s create charter schools. Let’s create schools just for boys. Let’s create schools just for girls. Let’s have kids pray in school. Let’s create common core standards. Let’s blame the college teacher-education programs. Let’s blame the teachers. Let’s blame the parents. Let’s give the governors and the business community the keys to the schools. Let’s flood the schools with technology. Let’s call schools boring. Let’s blame the curriculum.
Don’t you see how foolish we have been? Don’t you see that all of these initiatives are focused on the politics of education and not education? Don’t you realize that none of these attempts has made any difference in the education of children for the past 40 years?
Based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the nation’s report card), the average reading scores for 17-year-olds today is not significantly different from the scores in 1971.
For the past 43 years our nation has been dodging the real reasons why our system of education has been stagnant.
Two attempted child luring incidents reported in Bergen County
JUNE 7, 2014, 3:31 PM LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 2014, 3:35 PM BY AARON MORRISON STAFF WRITER THE RECORD
Authorities in two Bergen County towns were dealing with reports of attempted child luring Saturday.
In Elmwood Park, a 10-year-old girl told police Saturday morning that a man driving a red sedan asked if she needed a ride. When she refused the offer, the man yelled at the girl and he sped off, said Sgt. Ralph Sigona of the Elmwood Park police. Detectives were reviewing security footage from a building near where the alleged luring attempt took place, added Sigona, who did not release the location of the incident.
Tenafly Schools Superintendent Lynn Trager described a similar incident, reported to police Friday evening, near the Stillman Elementary playground at Windsor and Tenafly roads. A student was approached by an “older teenager with short hair” at approximately 9:30 p.m.
The teen asked the girl to come with him, but she ran away and informed an adult, Trager wrote in an alert sent to parents.
JUNE 6, 2014 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 2014, 12:31 AM PAGES: 1 2 > DISPLAY ON ONE PAGE
Concerns about hospital proposal Marcia Ringel
To the editor:
At two recent Planning Board meetings, residents were invited to share their concerns about Valley Hospital’s expansion proposal. This letter roughly reiterates my statement on May 20.
A child says, “I want a pony.” The parent says, “How about a puppy — or a guppy?”
Child’s counteroffer: “How about a slightly smaller pony with setbacks and an above-ground parking lot?”
The family doesn’t spend eight years discussing where a horse could be stabled or what it would eat. Just: “No pony.”
Valley Hospital’s revised proposal is a slightly smaller pony.
In the past 42 years I have entered Valley as an inpatient, outpatient, parent and visitor. But Valley feels less caring to me now. Our community has been treated with contempt by our community hospital, marketing madly with millions saved in taxes on the backs of this community. What began as David and Goliath morphed into David and Godzilla.
I feel perplexed as my neighbors must repeatedly remind our elected and appointed officials that we love our village, begging them not to destroy it in the name of progress or for fear of litigation.
I feel alarmed that almost every year a new group of residents has felt compelled to band together to protest the handing over of our public lands and space.
I feel betrayed by our Board of Education, who wimped out when they should have spoken out.
I feel dismayed that this issue has overshadowed five council elections.
Ridgewood neighborhoods are adjacent to schools, fields, parks, shops and a hospital. We lived in harmony for many years. That delicate balance must return.
Several decades ago the late Barney Van Dyk told me that he wanted to include indoor seating in his ice cream store, nestled among homes on Ackerman Avenue. But he graciously accepted the zoning board’s refusal, understanding that zoning laws protect residents. Ice cream is still eaten in the parking lot.
We have no dearth of fine hospitals. Even New York is coming: Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Basking Ridge and in the fall, physicians’ offices in Paramus for the Hospital for Special Surgery.
Village Planner Blais Brancheau’s recent report said Phase 2 of the hospital expansion might not happen. Of course it would, as would Phase 3, causing decades of unstoppable derangement — a tax-exempt Juggernaut that no wall, buffer or traffic island could mitigate.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-letters-to-the-editor/letter-concerns-about-hospital-proposal-1.1030466#sthash.qhqYB8WM.dpuf
Half of Americans can’t afford their house June 3, 2014, 1:58 p.m. EDT
Over half of Americans (52%) have had to make at least one major sacrifice in order to cover their rent or mortgage over the last three years, according to the “How Housing Matters Survey,” which was commissioned by the nonprofit John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and carried out by Hart Research Associates. These sacrifices include getting a second job, deferring saving for retirement, cutting back on health care, running up credit card debt, or even moving to a less safe neighborhood or one with worse schools.“Affordability issues are real and a major hurdle,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, an industry group. Home prices have increased 20% over the past two years while wages have barely gone up, he says. “Only by adding more new supply, via housing starts, can home prices be tamed,” Yun adds. In fact, construction of housing units has averaged around 1.5 million a year for the past five decades, he says, but it’s likely to be less than 1 million in 2014.
What’s more, at least 15% of American homeowners (or residents of 78 counties across the country) were living in housing markets where the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home requires more than 30% of the monthly median household income — long considered the maximum for rent/mortgage repayments. Housing costs above that threshold are “unaffordable by historic standards,” says Daren Blomquist, vice president at real estate data firm RealtyTrac. In New York county/Manhattan, mortgage payments represent 77% of the median income and in San Francisco County represents 70%.
MAY 23, 2014 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2014, 12:31 AM BY LAURA HERZOG STAFF WRITER
s Ridgewood the best place to retire in New Jersey? That’s what a blog for real estate agents is suggesting, having recently named Ridgewood the best municipality in New Jersey to retire in.
Though the announcement was meant to tout the benefits of living in the village, the list has been the subject of some immediate criticism for one of its preferred measures: a high cost of living, “higher being better, since you’ve saved for it.”
“Get your head out of the rarified air! Ridgewood is a great place to retire – if your idea of ‘affordable’ starts with a base of $15,000 worth of real estate taxes,” noted one commenter underneath the ranking on the Movoto Real Estate blog, which was posted last month.
But Chad Stiffley, a public relations associate for Movoto, noted that the ranking is composed of “simply the best places to enjoy your retirement years, whether that means moving or remaining there after you retire.” Places with a higher cost of living, he added, got better rankings, “because they generally are viewed by people as nicer places compared to those that have a low cost of living.”
“It should be great news for the Ridgewood community,” he said.
Kids Reject Michelle Obama’s “Healthy” School Lunches Tiffiny Ruegner May 24, 2014
Michelle Obama’s new dietary restrictions is so bad that they can’t even GIVE the food away. A million kids have turned away from Obama’s school lunch and schools are feeling the huge hit.
Via The Hill:
More than a million kids confronted by healthier school lunches are turning up their noses, leaving the cafeteria and heading out to get a burger instead.
The difficulty in getting students to eat lower-fat, lower-sodium meals is at the center of a food fight between House Republicans and first lady Michelle Obama that erupted this week.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, supported by President Obama, requires lunch programs that receive federal dollars to provide healthier meals. The new standards began to go into effect in 2012. Childhood obesity has spiraled in recent decades, and the first lady has made the fight against it a signature issue. Democrats say stemming the epidemic will cut healthcare costs and keep the armed forces functioning.
But Agriculture Department statistics show the number of school children in the National School Lunch Program dropped from 31.8 million in 2011 to 30.7 million in 2013. School boards are asking Congress to allow schools to opt out. Some schools are raiding their teaching budgets to cover the costs of mounds of wasted fruits and vegetables, Lucy Gettman of the National School Boards Association said.
The dietary restrictions have not actually made the food healthier. They have cut down the amount of food to cut calories which has also cut nutrients to the growing generation. When a body doesn’t have enough nutrients… it craves food more. Give us 10 years and you will see this denying kids food will have exacerbated the obesity problem. What they really needed to do was increase the amount of fresh non packaged food and either increased the food cost or encouraged volunteers over paid employees in the cafeterias for food prep to balance the extra cost for quality food.
