>dont forget this SUNDAY Oct 26, the 4th annual Ridgewood Fall Motorcyle classic. 1-4pm Chestnut ST, to benefit Tomorrows Childrens Fund @ the Office Bar&Grilll Chestnut st. Music food raffles prizes etc.. your donations go to a good cause..and its always a good time! !
>Page 2 of 1
By JEAN JONES
https://www.nj.com/bridgeton/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1224742217311660.xml&coll=10
MAURICE RIVER TWP. – School administrators say compliance with another state mandate for schools will be almost impossible for small, rural districts.
In a presentation to the Maurice River Board of Education on Tuesday, teacher Kathleen McGlynn outlined what will be required and the timeline to be followed for the five-year, full-day expanded preschool program that is mandated to begin in 2009.
McGlynn said that next year, the district is expected to serve 20 percent of the projected population with full-day preschool.
At the end of five years, 90 percent of the population is expected to be served.
The projected popuation will be computed by doubling the number of students currently in first grade.
The timeline calls for two classes of 4-year-olds next year and three classes in the second and third years.
The fourth year would require one class of 3 year olds and three of 4 year olds, increasing to three classes of 3 year olds and four classes of 4 year olds in the fifth year.
Classes are capped at 15, and each class must have a teacher certified to teach preschool and one aide.
Each district also must have a master teacher, with no teaching responsibilities, a Preschool Intervention and Referral Team, a Community and Parent involvement specialist and a Childhood Advisory Council to help children transition into preschool and through grade 3.
Superintendent John Saporito said the program will take classrooms the school doesn’t have.
“Every classroom is being used to provide instruction. We would have to sacrifice classrooms. I don’t see how we could service 3- and 4-year-old classes in this building. We’re a small district. It would cost a lot of money to initiate this. I don’t know where the money is going to come from,” he said.
Business administrator Patricia Powell said trailers are a possibility, but they would have to be approved each year.
An addition is not feasible.
The only option would be to outsource the program to a private entity or another school district.
“They are encouraging us to go to private providers,” McGlynn said.
The program is voluntary for parents, and McGlynn said she expects more interest by parents when they find the current half-day program is moving to a full day.
Special-needs students will be given first priority.
She suggested that the best way to choose the students for the first year might be a lottery, to be held at a school board meeting.
She also suggested that it would be best to leave one or two slots open in each class for students moving into the district.
Since there is an absolute cap of 15 per class, with no exceptions, a 16th student would require setting up another class.
In another matter, a group of seventh- and eighth-grade students asked for an after-school club for students who are not at risk but want to do homework together, collaborate on projects and work with their peers.
The students said the student council would be willing to raise funds for supplies.
“The kids are expressing to us ways they can be successful,” said teacher Leia Ellis.
They would like to use the computer lab and cafeteria and would like to start the second or third week in November and continue until the middle of April.
Saporito said he thought it was a great idea. A teacher would have to be found who is willing to stay after school and oversee the group.
https://www.nj.com/bridgeton/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1224742217311660.xml&coll=10
>Different thread, sort of:
George Soros, Hungarian-born financier said by Forbes to be one of the hundred richest people in the world, was the mastermind of Black Wednesday in Great Britain in 1992, which basically negated the worth of the pound sterling as a viable currency for Britain. The result was Britain’s inevitable decision to join the Continent by introducing the Euro as the pan-national currency. A concentration of financial power to attack national institutions is a scary thing.
Soros is a secretive, but nonetheless hugely influential, financial supporter of well-known Democratic causes in the United States, and is, in fact a major financial supporter of Candidate Obama’s campaign. How much? It can’t be tracked because of the interlocking corporations that Soros controls and the places from where he issues his money.
Soros makes his money betting against the moves of the market, otherwise known as hedge trading. He controls a lot of the market. He can make the market go up or down, depending on how he feels on a particular day.
I ask this: Is it possible that one of Obama’s most financially influential supporters caused, either directly or indirectly, the financial disaster in the United States?
Who has gained most from the Wall Street catastrophe?
An October surprise? Worked for the Republicans against Carter. Soros and Obama share the same One World view. Maybe Soros figured out a way to use our own system of capitalism to destroy the nation that perfected it.
I’d be interested to read how others feel.
Editors Note:
Largest recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008
Dodd, Christopher CT D $165,400
Obama, Barack IL D $126,349
Kerry, John MA D $111,000
>https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/nj_council_blocks_corzine_plan.html
by Tom Hester and Mike Frassinelli/The Star-Ledger
Wednesday October 22, 2008, 7:17 PM
A powerful state council today shot down the Corzine administration’s plan to make 89 rural towns pay part of the cost of State Police protection.
The ruling by the Council on Local Mandates spares the towns — including three dozen in Hunterdon, Sussex, and Warren counties — from paying $12.6 million, and ends a contentious battle between the state and mayors. The total cost for State Police protection for the towns is about $87 million.
Patricia A. Meyer, the executive administrator of the Council on Local Mandates, said its members determined the provisions were “null, void and unenforceable” because they constituted an unfunded local mandate.
More than a dozen of the towns, including tiny Rocky Hill in Somerset County, brought the matter to the council, contending they should not be forced to pay for services they have received for free since the State Police was established in 1921. Nearly 323,000 people live in the 89 towns, about 4 percent of New Jersey’s population.
“Governor Corzine’s proposal was a slap in the face to residents of these rural communities who already see a disproportionate amount of their tax dollars used to fund services for residents in urban areas of the state,” said Assemblyman Michael Doherty (R-Warren). “We warned the governor that his plan was unconstitutional, but he chose to ignore those warnings.”
The state, for example, wanted Union Township in Hunterdon to pay $224,887; Victory Gardens in Morris County $37,216; Rocky Hill $29,227; Wantage in Sussex County $448,074, and Harmony in Warren County $216,270.
The Council on Local Mandates, which is independent of all three branches of state government, was created to carry out a 1995 constitutional amendment that declared the state could not set mandates on local governments without paying for them. Its eight members are appointed by the governor, legislative leaders and the chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
Leland Moore, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said the matter may not be over, even though the Council on Local Mandates has powers to issue decisions that cannot be second-guessed by state courts.
“We strongly disagree with the council’s decision and are considering all options to reverse its potential impact,” Moore said. He would not say what those options may be.
Earlier in the day, Corzine said he may have to find cuts elsewhere to cover the $12 million. He has already said about $400 million may be sliced from the current budget because of the bad economy.
“We can always go and take municipal aid in some other place if we can’t do it in this place,” Corzine said. “This is all speculative … Is it going to come out of higher ed? Is it going to come out of school aid? We have limited choices.”
Rural mayors were outraged when Corzine proposed his plan, saying it would force higher property taxes.Over the summer, Knowlton Township mayor Frank Van Horn vowed he would go to jail before his Warren County municipality paid $123,060 for for State Police coverage.
William Dressel, executive director for the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, said the decision “is not just a win for the 89 municipalities, but for all local governments because this would have set a dangerous precedent in foisting upon the local property taxpayer costs for providing services the state has traditionally paid for.”
However, Hope Township Mayor Timothy McDonough said he does not believe the state will stop trying to get towns to pay.
“I think this issue is going to keep coming up,” said McDonough, who next month becomes president of the state League of Municipalities. “It started with Whitman, then McGreevey and now Corzine.”
McDonough said paying $86,000 for State Police coverage in Hope would have meant a $100 per household tax increase in his sparsely populated community off Route 80 in Warren County.
He said the township couldn’t afford to start its own police force or join one with a neighboring municipality. As it is, the township has just three full-time employees — a clerk and two road crew members.
McDonough said he is pushing for a plan by state Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-Cape May) to pay for rural State Police coverage through a $9 surcharge on traffic tickets.
Staff writer Dunstan McNichol contributed to this report.
https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/nj_council_blocks_corzine_plan.html
>A New Brighton man suffered minor injury in a crash that occurred when the driver of the car he was in ran underneath the rear of a tractor-trailer Monday afternoon, according to state police at Lamar.
The crash occurred at the Interstate80 westbound off-ramp at state Route 64 in Porter Township, Clinton County, at about 2:15 p.m., police reported.
A car driven by Florine McQuade, 77, of Ridgewood, N.J., was traveling down the off ramp and failed to see a tractor-trailer stopped at the stop sign at the bottom of the ramp.
McQuade’s car ran under the rear of the trailer, police said.
McQuade, the driver of the tractor-trailer, Robert Burton, 65, of Conley, Ga., and his passenger, Teresa Burton, 56, also of Conley, were all wearing seat belts and were uninjured. McQuade’s passenger, James DeMaria, 53, was also wearing a seat belt and suffered minor injury, police said. No information was available on whether he sought medical care.
McQuade’s car suffered major damage and was towed from the scene.
>No insurance? No problem! A U.S. entrepreneur takes tourists down deep.
By Jeff Wise
October 21, 2008: 9:53 AM ET
https://money.cnn.com/2008/10/13/smallbusiness/subprime_sub.fsb/
ROTAN, HONDURAS (Fortune Small Business) — Karl Stanley is a very happy man: he just found a dead horse.
The entrepreneur made the discovery while cruising in his submarine, the Idabel, 1,700 feet beneath the waters off Roatan, Honduras. At that depth, amid jagged black boulders and hills of sediment, you can see some amazing creatures: lobsters with spindly arms as long as their bodies, silver-skinned fish the size of a cavalry saber, orange anglerfish with jaws locked in a perpetual grin.
But to see the really big beasts, you need some really big bait. So eight hours earlier, Stanley had bought a tired old horse from a nearby stable, led it onto a boat, shot it in the head, tied cinder blocks to its hooves, and dumped it in the ocean.
The sea this morning was rough, and an unexpected lurch tossed the carcass overboard before Stanley had reached his intended spot. In these murky depths, finding lost objects – even one as large as a horse – can be tough. But there it is, the body stiff but intact, and a foot-long, clawless crustacean called an isopod crawling up its flank.
Then the main attraction glides slowly, sinuously into view: Hexanchus griseus, a deep-dwelling, six-gilled shark rarely seen by human beings. At 14 feet, it is slightly longer than Stanley’s vessel. Watching it through an acrylic dome window, on which the water is pressing with the weight of a locomotive, I find it hard to decide which I should be more concerned about: the dead horse, the giant shark, or the fact that Stanley built this submarine himself.
In the deep
Taking your customers this far down in an uninsured, homemade vessel may not seem like the smartest idea for a small business. But that is exactly what Stanley, 34, has been doing in Honduras for the past decade, taking advantage of a light regulatory environment to go deeper than any other tourist sub in the world. Despite the disapproval of U.S. operators, a string of accidents, and a business model that barely keeps his head above water, Stanley remains stubbornly optimistic. One of his favorite T-shirts reads: DON’T WORRY, I DO THIS ALL THE TIME.
Stanley can trace his obsession back to the age of 9, when he read a children’s book about a team of preteen detectives who build a submarine to help solve an underwater mystery. He started sketching plans for a craft of his own, and by 15 he had started construction in his parents’ backyard in Ridgewood, N.J. Stanley took the project with him to college in Florida, where he studied English literature (he has no formal training in engineering). The craft, dubbed C-BUG, took its maiden voyage the week he graduated.
A lot of would-be Captain Nemos start putting together subs in their backyards. Few ever get them in the water. The number who then turn them into a profitable business is minuscule. But Stanley persevered. Once he had proved the C-BUG could withstand dives of 70 feet, he trailered it to Fort Lauderdale and dove progressively deeper and deeper. He got tows out to the ocean from local yachtsmen by offering them rides in the sub.
In 1998, having gone down nearly 700 feet, Stanley felt ready to turn his sub into a business. What kind of business? He had no idea. So he signed up as an exhibitor at a local scuba-diving convention and sat alongside the C-BUG with a sign explaining that he was looking for ideas on how to use it. One of the first attendees to bite was the owner of a resort on the sleepy island of Roatan, 30 miles north of mainland Honduras, who thought that the prospect of a sub ride might draw new customers to his hotel.
Stanley flew down and was instantly smitten with the location. “You’ve got the protection of the reef in case you need to ride out a storm, yet you can motor ten minutes offshore and be in deep water,” he says. The C-BUG’s next dive was on Roatan, and this time Stanley had a paying passenger. At the age of 24, he had entered the ranks of professional submariners.
It has hardly been a risk-free enterprise. On one dive a window cracked 600 feet down, spraying seawater on a passenger. “That scared the crap out of me,” he admits. (He has broken three more windows since.) At other times the C-BUG has gotten stuck in a cave, been tangled in lobster traps, and suffered small onboard fires.
“I’ve never thought that I wasn’t coming up,” he says.
https://money.cnn.com/2008/10/13/smallbusiness/subprime_sub.fsb/
>Improvement Authority Paid Over $4 million To Democrat Donors
Latest BCIA Loan: $3 Mill For Toms River School
HACKENSACK, NJ — The Bergen County Improvement Authority is a runaway train whose primary purpose is to support the corrupt Bergen County Democratic Organization by making questionable loans in order to churn out millions of dollars in fees for major donors to the county Democratic machine, say the county Republican freeholder candidates.
Over the course of the past six-and-a-half years, the BCIA has churned out over $4.2 million in fees to a list of lawyers, auditors and financial consultants who donate heavily to the BCDO and other Democratic organizations in the state. Republicans says the BCIA is part of a corrupt county government system that helps support the all-Democratic freeholder board that provides little oversight of the BCIA.
“The BCIA is a key link in the chain of corruption forged by the Bergen County Democratic Party machine,” said GOP freeholder candidate Chris Calabrese. “These fees and contracts are what feeds the campaign war chests of freeholders David Ganz and Bernadette McPherson – the pawns of party bosses.
Despite the county’s claim that the BCIA is an essential agency that helps municipalities, research shows that of 22 loans made since 2002, 11 of them have gone to either county government or various arms of county government, including two $65 million loans to the Bergen County Utilities Authority in Little Ferry. Last week the BCIA made another questionable $3 million loan to the Toms River school district in Ocean County. The freeholders approved that loan without discussion.
“There is nothing indispensible about the BCIA – except to the extent that it uses county resources to pay large fees to firms that donate big money to feed the corrupt political machine of the indicted Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Ferriero,” said Freeholder candidate Chris Calabrese.
Calabrese said the hunger for loans for the BCIA was on display earlier this year when Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney harangued the Glen Rock School Board to take a loan from the BCIA. “Pure and simple, McNerney was trying to strong arm the school board so the BCIA could generate more fees.”
more….
>https://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20081017/NEWS01/810170359
By MICHAEL RISPOLI
Gannett State Bureau
Four-month-old Gianna DiFiglia died only two days after being injected with four different vaccines at a routine doctor visit.
Thursday, her mother, Patricia DiFiglia of Hackettstown, stood on the State House steps with a picture of her daughter in the air, underlined by the words “Murder,” protesting mandatory children vaccinations.
The issue has come to a head since New Jersey became the first in the nation to require annual flu shots for preschoolers last month. DiFiglia said she is scared to let her two other children get the mandatory shots, but the decision is difficult because schools mandate the vaccinations.
“I really want the choice without fail to be able to say no, especially with the flu shot,” said DiFiglia, 41. “It’s just ludicrous that they are mandating it in New Jersey.”
DiFiglia was one parent in a passionate crowd of 200 adults and children rallying for the passage of a bill allowing for conscientious objection exemptions to mandatory vaccinations. Many in the crowd held up signs saying “Our Kids, Our Choice,” or “Mother Knows Best.”
Those opposing the mandatory vaccinations say parents should have ultimate say on what shots their children get and that chemicals in the vaccines can cause serious neurological disorders, such as autism.
Health officials strongly oppose such exemptions, saying they would open the door for widespread disease. They view vaccines as a great advancement in medicine that has eliminated diseases such as polio.
“Vaccines have really changed the face of medicine,” said Lawrence Frenkel, a physician at the Children’s Hospital at St. Peter’s University Hospital in New Brunswick. “It has saved millions of lives and prevented countless epidemics of horrible, deadly disease.”
New Jersey last month became the first state to require annual flu shots for preschoolers and approved three additional required vaccinations. All told, children need 11 disease-related vaccinations, some requiring multiple doses, to enter day care or preschool in the state, state Department of Health and Senior Services spokeswoman Marilyn Riley said.
While 19 states have conscientious-objection laws on the books, New Jersey currently allows for exemptions only for medical or religious reasons. A hearing on the proposal was held in June, but the bill still has not been acted upon.
Reach Michael Rispoli at [email protected]
https://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20081017/NEWS01/810170359
>https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/new_jerseys_pension_funds_lost.html
Posted by cjrothma October 20, 2008 15:24PM
New Jersey’s pension funds lost more than $5 billion last month, sliding to a value of $70.7 billion and continuing a swoon that has lasted more than a year.
Over the past 12 months the pension accounts have lost $12 billion in value. They now stand more than $14 billion below the peak value they reached more than eight years ago in early 2000.
For the first three months of the budget year — July, August and September — the pension accounts have lost 8.82 percent on their stock and other investments, according to the Treasury Department report.
For taxpayers, that performance is troublesome. Actuaries who calculate each year how much the state should put into the pension accounts to meet future benefit payments assume the money on hand will earn an average of 8.25 percent each year.
When longterm returns miss that mark, taxpayers must make up the difference. This year, between state and local taxes, taxpayers put more than $2 billion into the accounts, which bankroll retirement benefits for 700,000 teachers and public employees.
According to the Treasury Department report, the fund’s domestic stock holdings lost $2.6 billion in value during September, while the value of its international stock portfolio dropped from $16 billion to $13.8 billion. Other investment losses pushed the total drop for September to just over $5 billion.
https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/new_jerseys_pension_funds_lost.html
>Dear Friends,
In the aftermath of the $700 billion bailout, many Americans are wondering how this exercise in government spending will affect their pocketbooks. No place is this of greater concern than in the state of New Jersey, a state afflicted with unusually high taxes. Among these taxes is the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which is claiming greater numbers of victims among middle class families.
The AMT was created by the Democrat-led Congress in 1969 as a parallel tax universe to ensure that “wealthy” Americans paid income taxes even if they had no income tax liability under the regular income tax system. Taxpayers have to calculate their taxes under the regular tax system, calculate them again under the AMT system, and then pay the higher tax liability. Essentially, the AMT was a net to catch high-income tax avoiders. But, Congress failed to look to the future when it wrote the AMT into law, and today it captures many families firmly in the middle class. Primarily, this is because the AMT is not indexed to inflation, so the income threshold set in 1969 for the very wealthy remains the income threshold for paying the AMT penalty today. To make matters worse, especially for those of us here in New Jersey with a very high state and local tax burden, the AMT fails to allow for commonplace deductions and tax credits, including the deduction for state and local taxes and the home mortgage interest tax credit. About 4 million taxpayers each year are deprived of the various deductions and credits that often save middle class families from stiff tax liability.
Last year, 3.5 million taxpayers were subject to the outdated and burdensome AMT. This year, the AMT will affect a whopping 23 million taxpayers. And, according to the Urban Institute/Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, if Congress continues to neglect this growing problem, in 2010, the AMT is projected to ensnare 32.4 million taxpayers – 34 percent of them are individual filers. That same analysis shows that 89 percent of married families with two or more children and incomes between $75,000 and $100,000 will be penalized under the AMT. By 2017, these numbers become still more dire: 53 million taxpayers – almost half – will be hit by this tax penalty.
There is no question that this outdated tax must be repealed or at the very least reformed. Up to now, Congress has put in place a series of one year patches to ensure that middle class Americans wouldn’t be enveloped by the AMT.
I’ve introduced the AMT Middle Class Fairness Act which would index the AMT to inflation and allow a state and local tax deduction against the AMT. This is a commonsense approach to the underlying problems of the AMT, and it would go a long way to helping New Jersey families who will be sideswiped by this stealth tax. The real answer, however, is to repeal the AMT. Last year, I joined several of my colleagues to introduce a new approach that would actually eliminate the AMT and restore fairness to the system for middle class America. The Taxpayers Choice Act would make the tax system transparent, simple and efficient.
Congress must make fixing the AMT a priority before it destroys the American middle class. It’s time for Washington starts looking out for taxpayers and their pocketbooks. It’s time for Washington to turn its focus on protecting the family budget, not growing the federal budget.
Sincerely,
Scott Garrett
Member of Congress
BIG TAX INCREASES ON THE WAY
>Eat more dog food 9 (8%)
Buy a second hand Mercedes in stead of new 18 (16%)
Send your kids off to work 9 (8%)
Have or shop at a garage sale 6 (5%)
Eat out less 69 (62%)
Votes : 111
We found the a full 69% said they would eat out less and 16% said they would buy a used instead of a new mercedes but only 8% said they would eat more dog food!
>THE NEW YORK TIMES
October 19, 2008
By KAREN ANN CULLOTTA
School officials and parents across the nation are turning an increasingly critical eye on the time-honored tradition of voters’ casting ballots in the gymnasiums and hallways of neighborhood school buildings while classes go on as usual just a few yards away.
Citing a litany of safety concerns, many officials are opting to keep youngsters home on Nov. 4, Election Day.
“School districts across the country now spend millions of dollars each year on controlling access to buildings with locked doors and surveillance cameras to keep strangers out,” said Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services, an advocacy group, in Cleveland. “In a post-Columbine, post-9/11 world, we shouldn’t be opening the doors at our schools on Election Day, and just hoping everything will be O.K.”
The decision to cancel classes on Election Day in the Rockland public schools in Massachusetts stemmed from an accident — an elderly driver, on his way to vote in the state’s presidential primary on Feb. 5, struck and critically injured an 8-year-old girl outside an elementary school in a neighboring district.
The accident and the response by Rockland officials caught the attention of a PTA president in Aurora, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, a mother of two whose worries about the use of schools as polling places prompted the district to give students the day off on Election Day.
“The impetus for our resolution was simply a parent who asked, ‘Does it make sense for the security measures we have in place at our schools to be abandoned on Election Day?’ ” said Robin Church, president of the Parents’ Council at Indian Prairie School District 204 in Aurora. “We all agreed that student safety was paramount every day, and that includes Election Day.”
At the Smithtown Central School District in New York, Election Day will find teachers and administrators gathered at a professional development conference, while the district’s 11,000 students enjoy a holiday from classes.
“The decision to have a nonattendance day in November coinciding with Election Day was a no-brainer,” said Smithtown’s superintendent of schools, Edward Ehmann. “Our parking lots are already crowded with people coming and going on a regular school day, and this election is expected to have a record voter turnout.”
In Allen County, Ind., which includes Fort Wayne, students will be in school on Election Day, but voters will not. Officials have moved the polling places from schools to churches and other public places.
“In today’s world, we ask a mother to show her driver’s license before she can deliver cupcakes to her daughter’s classroom,” said John H. Weicker, security director for Fort Wayne Community Schools. “But on Election Day, we were allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to walk in the front door.”
The wisdom of closing schools on Election Day has skeptics, including Kathy Christie, chief of staff at the Education Commission of the States, a nonpartisan organization. She described the effort to separate students from voters as a “knee-jerk reaction.”
“It breaks my heart to think we are losing the opportunity to send a very strong message to children about their civic duties,” Ms. Christie said. “Keeping kids home on Election Day also creates an inconvenience and another worry about day care for their parents.”
Chicago is one city where classes will not be canceled, nor polling places relocated, on Nov. 4.
“Our schools are public buildings, and we need to make them as available as possible to our community,” said Mike Vaughn, a Chicago Public Schools spokesman. “Our primary concern is that there is not a disruption to the students, so we’ve made sure the voting booths are not located in high-traffic areas.”
It is a decision with which the Cook County clerk, David Orr, whose jurisdiction includes the Chicago Public Schools, respectfully disagrees, especially since a record number of voters are expected to cast ballots.
“In an ideal world, it would be nice for children to see voters in their schools,” Mr. Orr said. “But you have to ask yourself, what if?”
>The Fly has learned that the recent daytime intrusions into two separate Ridgewood public schools have prompted a grass roots movement to keep children out of school on Election Day, Tuesday, November 4th. It is expected that an informal e-mail and flyer campaign promoting the movement will begin shortly.
The movement’s leader, who wishes to remain anonymous at this time, told The Fly that “There will be many strangers in my child’s school because it’s a polling place and I just don’t think that school administration can give parents any assurance that these people won’t get anywhere near my child.”
At this time, the official Ridgewood BOE website makes no reference to the most recent daytime school intrusion, in which a male/female burglary team made their way inside of the Ridge School on West Ridgewood Avenue and rifled through the personal belongings of several staff members. One intruder was apprehended on the scene by uniformed Ridgewood police officers; the other managed to escape.
Will you be sending your child to school on November 4th or not?
>From kitchentablemath.blogspot.com
https://www.kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/
Monday, October 13, 2008
Ted Nutting on the math mess
I’m a high-school math teacher in Seattle. When I hear Mark Emmert, president of the University of Washington, say that this state is “at the bottom in the production of scientists and engineers,” and warn that our graduates “will be washing the cars for the people who come here for the best jobs,” I know what the problem is. It’s math. We are failing to educate our children in mathematics. I know how that came about, and what we can do about it.
The problem is national in scope, but in Washington state our difficulties can be traced principally to Terry Bergeson, superintendent of public instruction for the past 12 years. She oversaw the writing of our state’s weak, vague math standards, basing them on a “reform” idea to promote “discovery” learning. This has turned teachers into “facilitators” who “guide” children in learning activities. It has promoted “differentiated instruction,” placing students of wildly differing abilities together where some students cannot do the required work, often to the detriment of those who can.
She has moved away from rigorous testing. The “reform” math she champions encourages such things as journals, portfolios and group projects that tend to form large parts of classroom grading systems, while test results are relegated to a lesser role. The math portion of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), aligned to her faulty standards, tests math skills at a low level. Even so, about half our 10th-graders fail it.
She has wasted millions of dollars on “professional development” to encourage teachers to put “reform” theories into practice. These theories are supposed to make it possible for all students to learn math. But few students know significant mathematics, and most know very little. About half of our students entering college now have to take remedial math. Many of our students who do succeed use private tutors, and the racial achievement gaps have widened. “Reform’s” emphasis on equity and fairness has been revealed to be empty talk.
My experience tells me that we can fix this, and quickly. I am the Advanced Placement calculus teacher at Ballard High School. I don’t teach Bergeson-style. I tell my students what they need to know, they do problems to understand how it works, and they demonstrate their knowledge and understanding through testing. Up until this year, we’ve insisted that our students who take AP calculus actually be able to do the work.
We at Ballard have by far the best AP calculus program in Seattle Public Schools, based on AP test scores. I have no special magnetism or charisma; I’m not a cult figure for teenagers. I have high standards and I require the students to work. If they don’t work, they know they will probably flunk. But they do work, and I am proud of them. I also have the benefit of having an older textbook that doesn’t fit the “reform math” model, and most of my students have had an excellent pre-calculus teacher the year before.
In most of our other math classes (and I doubt that Ballard is unique in this), we’ve tended to follow a “reform” model. We’ve passed students on from class to class; there is no meaningful threshold they must cross to enter a more-difficult class. Since we find that many students in our classes cannot do the work, we dumb down the courses. We say we are admitting unprepared students into our classes in order to “challenge” them.
But students should be challenged in the classes that they are qualified to take, not sent on to classes where they cannot do the work. Unfortunately, things are changing, even in our school’s AP calculus classes: We’re starting to admit unqualified students, and our program will soon begin to deteriorate.
It’s not just Ballard’s AP calculus program that is successful, and it’s not just the top students. North Beach Elementary in Seattle [was this Niki Hayes’ school? will find out] switched its math curriculum to Saxon Math in 2001. This excellent series teaches real math and does not follow Bergeson’s fuzzy, reform-oriented ideology. North Beach did this with reluctant agreement from Seattle Public Schools because the PTA paid for the books and because the superintendent supported site-based decision-making. North Beach’s passing rate on the WASL rose from 68 percent in 2000 to 94 percent in 2004 — and yet, every year parents worry that real math will be scrapped. Recently, the school has had to seek waivers to avoid having to teach the district’s “reform” math.
Legislators have begun to understand the problem. At the Legislature’s direction in 2007, the state Board of Education reviewed our state’s math standards, finding they were failing. The Legislature set up a system to fix the problems, but that system gave Bergeson the opportunity to sabotage the process. She stacked the committees selected to rewrite the standards with like-minded ideologues. The results were so bad the Legislature refused to accept the rewritten standards, sending them to the Board of Education to fix.
Bergeson then stacked the committees set up to select curricula for state approval. That process is not complete, but the first results are discour-aging. The Legislature had required that the new mathematics standards be based on (among other things) the standards of Singapore, consistently a leader on international tests, but Bergeson’s initial submission of texts ranked Singapore Math, that country’s official curriculum (and a superior one), dead last out of 12.
Most school-district administrations have gone along with Bergeson and share responsibility for this mess. Even as an uproar arose nationally against the programs Bergeson promotes, Seattle started using two of them in elementary and middle schools.
None of this is necessary. Students can learn math. My students learn it. If our education leaders would follow the lead of our Legislature, stop ignoring obvious successes and support what actually works, we would see major improvements in just a few years.
Ted Nutting is the Advanced Placement calculus teacher at Ballard High School in Seattle.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
>Posted by packerma October 15, 2008 18:43PM
As the election approaches, Rep. Scott Garrett has a 2-1 fundraising lead over Dennis Shulman, his Democratic challenger for the 5th District seat, according to campaign finance reports filed Wednesday.
https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/garretts_fundraising_outpaces.html
Garrett, 49, a Sussex County Republican, has $571,000 in cash on hand, while Shulman, a Bergen County Democrat, has $279,000, according to their Federal Election Commission reports for July 15 to Oct. 15.
However, the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has promised to bolster the 58-year-old Shulman’s coffers, after labeling the race Tuesday as one of its “Red to Blue” campaigns, in which Democratic challengers are to receive more funding and assistance to try to defeat GOP incumbents on Nov. 4.
“We think this means Dennis is well-positioned for October, especially as the national party has made the race a priority and Dennis’ grassroots support continues to expand exponentially,” Shulman’s campaign manager, Jeff Hauser, said Wednesday.
Garrett’s campaign notes he has outpaced his own fundraising, as compared with the 2006 election.
“We have exceeded the fundraising activity from previous elections by almost $300,000, and our cash on hand is twice that of our opponent,” Garrett campaign manager Amanda Gasperino said Wednesday. “These numbers are proof that voters in the 5th District want a congressman who will fight to protect New Jersey taxpayers and their family budgets.”
The campaign finance reports show the following figures:
Garrett had $649,000 at the start of the quarter; raised another $281,000; spent $359,000; and has $571,000 cash-on-hand. About $179,000 of Garrett’s contributions came from individual donations while $98,000 came from political action committees, or PACs, including the New Jersey Right to Life PAC, American Conservative Union, and several banking, insurance and finance groups.
Shulman had $258,000 at the start of the quarter; raised another $328,000; spent $307,000; and has $279,000 cash on hand. Some $205,000 of Shulman’s contributions came from individual donations while $69,000 came from PACs, including the NARAL Pro-Choice PAC, the American Federation of Teachers and several labor unions.
Shulman also loaned his campaign $53,000 in the third quarter. He loaned his campaign $35,000 in the second quarter and also has provided $14,000 in in-kind expenses.
Garrett has not loaned any of his own money to his campaign.
Of Shulman’s loans to his campaign, Gasperino said: “It’s clear that he has been unable to raise the amount of money he needs to fund his negative media buy .¤.¤. he’s forced to dip into his own pocket because 5th District voters refuse to fund his incessantly negative and baseless attack ads.”
Hauser said Shulman “has engaged a vast grassroots support that will work in the field and friend-to-friend to bring the vote out, whereas Garrett has gone financial services PAC-to-PAC to build a top-heavy campaign, out-of-touch with the district.”
Shulman has run ads blasting Garrett as “corrupt” for receiving a farmland tax assessment on nearly 10 acres of land used by his brother for a Christmas tree farm — but not listing the farmland as an asset on federal disclosure forms.
Garrett is an attorney from Wantage who is known as New Jersey’s most conservative congressman. He has said he is not required to disclose the farmland because he does not earn any income from it.
Shulman, of Demarest, is a psychologist and a rabbi. He has been blind since childhood. If elected, Shulman would become the first rabbi in Congress.
https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/garretts_fundraising_outpaces.html
