>“As a teacher I will be noting any parents with objections and when their child needs “the benefit of a doubt” none will be forthcoming. These sniveling “parents” are ignorant fear mongers.”
…and yes if this is really a teacher we do think they should be fired immediately !
…this is exactly the kind of thing that has lead so many to be so suspicious of the Presidents motives …
>I am VERY proud of Ridgewood for declaring that 1) this will not be aired and 2)alternatives will be provided, kudos to the Superintendent and his entire staff, we can only hope that the rest of NJ public schools will follow…Great work! I am SO proud ot live in this great Village!
“Kudos to the District and Superintendent for making an ‘official’ announcement of not showing the video! Very proud of our district here!”
JP ALLEN
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From RHS E-mail
“Ridgewood High School will not be showing the President’s speech live at 11:00am ET on September 8, 2009. Since the program is offered as downloadable media from a variety of resources, we have decided to counduct our regular instructional program.
Thank you.
John A. Lorenz
Principal”
[email protected]
>Yes, he is the President.
Yes, he can deliver a pro-education message.
Yes, it could be positve.
However, here is the fear factor.
He sends out discussion notes with a question about
“How can you help President Obama?”
Not “How can you help your country, countryman, parents, or yourself”, but how can you help HIM.
Children are susceptible to propaganda. (Nobody voted for Nixon in my elementary school mock election, the hippy teachers would have made us feel foolish.)
So as parents, it’s good to ask questions.
Maybe he’s already changed the subject matter of his speech. Maybe it will be more bland “stay in school” jargon and less “join the peace corps for the GREATER GOOD”. (Remember, this is a man who said he was going to raise capital gains tax, even though that has consistently resulted in LESS REVENUE, because IT IS FAIR.)
There a fine line for our type of government, a government that allows for private property and free markets.
We better keep an eye on it.
>I heard his wife address the graduating class of UCAL Merced – a school with a large minority population. She urged them to go back to the neighborhoods after graduation to community organize and tend to the social needs of the commnity.
Not for nothing. If I were a migrant farm worker breaking my back in the hot son picking lettuce to send my kid to college;
I’d want him or her to aim a tad higher.
She didn’t advise them to go work in the business community or open their own small busineses to create jobs and generate revenues for the community.
She didn’t tell them to be successful and inspire others to do so – actually help others to do so with the wealth accummulated by hard work and the opportunity that America offers all. She told them to go work in a soup kitchen.
I wonder if a young Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey were in that audience and decided to take that route instead of the one that brought them unimaginable riches ; which they have generously shared with the world’s needy.
I wonder about all those folks who would not have been helped if these two careers had been detoured by such a speech.
And I think I’ll keep my kids home on Sept. 8.
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A Senior Citizen bus service began on Tuesday, September 1st!
On Tuesdays the bus will operate from 9:30AM to 2:30PM. The bus will travel on an established “loop” route around Ridgewood. Click Here for schedule and map.
On Thursdays, the bus will operate from 9:30AM to to 2:00PM on a reservation only basis. To make a reservation, please call the Village Hall Reception Desk at 201/670-5500 x200. Call in advance, as the reservations will be given on a ‘first come first served’ basis.
Questions: please call 201/670-5500 x204.
>Thursday, September 3, 2009
Last updated: Thursday September 3, 2009, 11:39 AM
BY KEVIN DEMARRAIS
The Record
STAFF WRITER
A Lodi-based auto repair chain has been sued by state regulators, charged with allegedly billing customers for work that was not done, including wheel alignments and other jobs for which some of the chain’s 13 shops didn’t even have the necessary equipment.
In a five-count complaint filed today in Superior Court in Elizabeth, Brake-O-Rama was also cited for allegedly offering coolant flushes, power-steering purges, or power steering flushes when some stores lacked the necessary equipment.
In addition, Brake-O-Rama shops in Lodi, Ridgewood and other locations were allegedly advertising and selling motor vehicle inspection services when its stores were not licensed to do so. Instead, Brake-O-Rama took the vehicles to state inspection sites, where inspections are free, even as it charged customers for the service, the state says in its court filing.
The lawsuit, brought under the Consumer Fraud Act by the Office of the Attorney General, follows an undercover investigation in June by inspectors from the Division of Consumer Affairs at the chain’s repair shops in Jersey City, Brick, Linden, West New York and Elizabeth.
Superior Court Judge John F. Malone granted the state’s request for temporary restraining order – which Brake-O-Rama did not object to – that bars the chain from advertising and selling services it can’t provide, including state inspections, and from destroying, concealing or altering any books or records related to its repair services.
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Having both worked in the ground zero area and having lost so many friends and neighbors we find the use of 9/11 images to promote nationalised medicine extremely offensive .
PJ Blogger
Last Updated: Wed, 09/02/2009 – 2:56pm
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2009/sep/obama-s-9-11-war-against-right-wing-domestic-terrorists
President Obama has picked the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history to launch a campaign calling on senators to pass a public healthcare option by fighting back against “our own right-wing domestic terrorists.”
The phone campaign, which will begin on September 11, also suggests that those who oppose the president’s health care plan are the heirs of Osama bin Laden. The White House pulled the plan’s details from Obama’s Organizing for America website after a conservative columnist wrote about it this week, but the text can still be viewed in the story.
The plan directs Obama’s grassroots supporters to wage a coordinated healthcare reform effort by calling their U.S. Senators on September 11 to “fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders.”
It proceeds to encourage supporters to defeat the anti democratic forces of hate who conspire to remain healthy and wealthy while the public languishes under the burden of our present health care system. “Reclaim our land from the heirs of, yes: Bin Laden.”
Essentially the president of the United States has designated the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history to liken those who oppose his plans to deadly Middle Eastern terrorists. Talk about pathetically poor taste.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2009/sep/obama-s-9-11-war-against-right-wing-domestic-terrorists
>https://www.docstoc.com/docs/10582301/President-Obama’s-Address-to-Students-Across-America-September-8-2009
>
The top 15 highest-earning college degrees all have one thing in common — math skills. That’s according to a recent survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which tracks college graduates’ job offers.
“Math is at the crux of who gets paid,” said Ed Koc, director of research at NACE. “If you have those skills, you are an extremely valuable asset. We don’t generate enough people like that in this country.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/107402/most-lucrative-college-degrees.html?mod=edu-collegeprep
>Construction a priority for Glen Rock’s school leader
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
BY EVONNE COUTROS
The Record
STAFF WRITER
https://www.northjersey.com/news/56479967.html
GLEN ROCK — David C. Verducci, 55, is getting settled into his new job as Glen Rock schools superintendent, starting a five-year contract in July. Verducci, of Upper Saddle River, was hired from a field of 40 candidates and will be paid $225,000 a year. He was the chief school administrator in River Vale since 2004 and served as superintendent in Fairview since 1992.
Q. What is a priority in the school district?
The [$45.3 million] renovation and construction. The high school and the middle school are in serious need, physically. The town passed the referendum project last year and that was pretty forward-thinking considering the economic atmosphere. People in Glen Rock have a clear sense of the schools as an investment and recognize they are quality places and also realize that to maintain that, it was time to do some big work.
Q. You are considered a superintendent who isn’t shy about using and relying on data to measure student progress. True?
Part of my presentation to the faculty is you have to deal with balance. It’s quality and quantity, efficiency, effectiveness, cooperation, competition. … So when I look at data-driven decision-making, you bet I study the numbers, but I study it in terms of student achievement and budget, but, it always has to be counterbalanced by the human factors.
Q. Do you believe it’s correct that you’re perceived as a data-driven superintendent?
If you use it right. There’s the problem with people who go only by the numbers. … I did my Ph.D. in organizational analysis and qualitative analysis. You have to be really careful not to extrapolate and over-extrapolate. What’s Freud’s great line? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Q. You have spent almost all of your more than 30 years as a teacher, vice principal, elementary principal and superintendent in Bergen County. Are you being choked by state mandates?
We don’t play fast and loose with the rules. I may not always like the rules, but the fact of the matter is if the state [Education Department] has the right to make them, we’ll live by them. It doesn’t mean that I won’t do my best to have them changed working through state organizations but no, we live by them. And that I insist on.
Q. How do you perceive the district?
There are no fatal flaws here. It’s not maximizing its full potential. I want to make Glen Rock the place where other people want to be. There has to be organizational integration … getting all the pieces to work together. What the district really needs to take off is just to have a unifying sense of vision.
E-mail: [email protected]
>Anonymous said…
Public service is a thankless job. Ask any HSA president.
2:36 PM
Anonymous said…
Strictly speaking, at this point in the history of the Ridgewood district, any given HSA president is not serving the public.
They are serving Cottage Place. There is a difference.
Anyone who says that public service is a thankless job deserves no thanks from the public.
5:39 PM
Anonymous said…
Couldn’t agree more 5:39 PM. The HSAs truly believe that they are serving the parents and students. They don’t know how sucked in they are with keeping incompetent administrators and the board members who coddle them in place. That hurts everybody. That is why they think their volunteer jobs are thankless. How can we thank them for hurting us? This is public education and they are enablers of the system and its numerous flaws.
11:40 PM
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Matthew Jordan
Tuesday, September 1, 2009 (973) 714-6115
Agostinelli & Bombace Challenge Trenton Insiders Rumana & Russo to 6 Debates
‘40th District voters deserve an open debate on the issues facing their families’
Ridgewood, NJ – 40th District Assembly candidates John Agostinelli and Mark Bombace call on Assemblyman Scott Rumana and Assemblyman David Russo to join them in 6 debates, representing the three counties in the 40th District.
“Scott Rumana and David Russo have served as state legislators for a combined 17 years. As such they should be able to speak to and clearly demonstrate their efforts on behalf of the citizens in the district and I look forward to hearing what they have to say, said Bombace.” “The 40th District needs effective, accountable representation that will work to lower our taxes and invest in our future. We are running as the fresh, new voices who will bring new solutions to education, public safety and reform – rather than the stale, old ways that simply aren’t getting the job done.”
Trenton Insiders Rumana and Russo have displayed a lack of accountability and transparency about where they stand and what they have accomplished for 40th District constituents. Therefore, public forums are an important way for voters to hear where candidates stand on the important issues facing the 40th District during the upcoming campaign. Agostinelli and Bombace propose 3 debates in Bergen County, 2 debates in Passaic County, and 1 debate in Essex County to give voters in the far stretching 40th District a chance to directly hear the differences between the candidates.
“Since the days of our Founding Fathers, engaging your opponents in debate is not just the staple of any political campaign, it is also part of the democratic process,” said Agostinelli. “Sadly, Trenton Insider Scott Rumana refused to debate his opponents in the Republican primary, and showed an utter disrespect for his constituents. That’s why we are personally asking Rumana to debate in his hometown of Wayne, as well as my hometown of Little Falls, because the voters need to hear directly from him. Sadly, the Rumana record has been more about serving lobbyists and the political connected, than the families of the 40th District. We are facing serious problems, families are struggling to pay the bills, taxes are constantly going up, and we need Scott Rumana to defend his record. Mark and I have serious proposals to lower taxes, create jobs, and reform education, but unfortunately Scott Rumana has been silent on these issues since he was elected to the State Assembly.”
Counter to the way incumbent politicians normally operate, John Agostinelli and Mark Bombace already are laying out a series of serious policy proposals on a slew of issues effecting all of us and our way of life including housing, economic development, education, and property taxes. Please visit our website which can be found at www.40thDistrict.com, to view these proposals and learn more about where John and Mark stand on the problems facing 40th District families. We would offer you our opponents website, unfortunately they do not have one stating where they stand. This is just another reason the voters need the candidates to take part in open forum to discuss their contrasting views and life experiences. Voters deserve to be given a clear choice on who will serve their interests, and who is serving the interests of the politically connected.
“John Agostinelli and Mark Bombace have the real world values and practical solutions needed in the State Assembly,” said campaign manager Jim Tighe. “While we realize that Scott Rumana’s schedule is very busy as an Assemblyman and Chairman of the Passaic County Republican Party, we still hope he can make some time from his schedule to defend his record in front of his constituents. This campaign needs to be about issues: the issues facing 40th District families and how we are going to solve them. I hope Assemblymen Rumana and Russo accept our offer to debate we can see what they have gotten done in Trenton and how they are solving these problems-I know John and Mark are ready to talk about how they are going to use their practical experiences as a civil engineer and career fire fighter to craft common sense legislation.”
The Agostinelli & Bombace for Assembly campaign anxiously await a response from the Rumana & Russo campaign to determine specific dates, debate formats, and assembling impartial moderators and associations to oversee the debates.
Election Day is Tuesday November 3rd, 2009. The 40th Legislative District encompasses parts of Bergen, Essex, and Passaic Counties, including the following towns: Cedar Grove Township, Franklin Lakes Borough, Little Falls Township, Mahwah Township, Midland Park Borough, Oakland Borough, Ridgewood Village, Ringwood Borough, Verona Township, Wanaque Borough, Wayne Township, and Wyckoff Township.
To learn more about John Agostinelli and Mark Bombace, please visit our campaign website:
www.40thDistrict.com
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