>RIDGEWOOD SCHOOLS ARE OPEN TODAY, THURSDAY, SEPT. 20, 2007 After hearing late yesterday afternoon that the Emerson mayor had received a bomb threat letter, I immediately contacted the Ridgewood police. After several conversations we concluded that there was no specific threat to the Ridgewood schools. Nevertheless, additional security measures were initiated at all buildings overnight. We continue to feel that it is safe for students to come to our schools today. Therefore, Ridgewood public schools are open today for a full session. Dr. Timothy Brennan, Interim Superintendent
>This is not a new idea. You know when your kid is in Kindergarten and they show you his “portfolio” and that is how he is measured…this is “portfolios” for high school students.
There are several issues with this, the first being that a child’s grade is already measured by class work, class participation, group work and the midterm and final. Midterms and Finals in Ridgewood High are only a portion of a child’s grade already(25-40%), so implementing this doesn’t make sense since there is already a “blended” grading system in effect.
The down side is that by removing standard midterms and finals they are eliminating the “test” that 1)ensures that all teachers teach the same content 2)ensures kids get ready for real midterms and finals in college 3)ensures students and parents have leverage if the class participation and “group work” is marked low but the midterm and final grades are high they can lobby for a decent grade.
This is a stupid trend that is not used in any top tier college. When they do it in Harvard, then Ridgewood should adapt it. Otherwise they are buying into a fad presented by a private consulting group who charged them tons of money for training in the concepts. Grant Wiggins is not a nonprofit think tank, it’s like the EST of education.
Ask the President of Princeton if she’s using any Grant Wiggins there…really this is absurd.
>Ridgewood Pool Project – POOL CHATS September 19thAll residents are invited to a “Pool Chat” on Wednesday, September 19th at 9:15am; 12:30pm or 7:30pm – Held in the Youth Lounge, Level 1, Village Hall. All comments are welcome.Click Here
>Dr Ives a proponent of TERC and reform math ,who had become increasingly the target of parent’s angst over reform math issue has tendered her resignation.
>How much more in reduction of services are Village residents going to take? Since the Village Hall building project and other real estate purchases. This Council and administration is bringing living in Ridgewood to new low. Council members and Village Manager should just admit that they were left some serious debt from previous Village Manager and Council decisions and projects. Take the hit, advise residents that they need to raise municiple taxes to getback on track and bring the Village back to the community it once was. There is point where you have stop cutting back on services this Village proudly had. Streets used to be cleaned of snow and leaves ontime. Village owned properties and buildings used to look clean and functional – no more! And now, start charging for medical attention and transport? I think residents will not take any more of this. We will see at election time, won’t we.
>In an effort to eliminate or significantly reduce the number of complaints alleging inconsistent interpretation and/or application of Historic Preservation Commission standards related to building construction/renovation in the Village Center Historic District, Village Council members will introduce via ordinance a set of clear guidelines pertaining to such activity. The change to an ordinance format was recommended to Council members by the Village’s professional planner, Blais L. Brancheau, PP, AICP, CLA PP.
On Tuesday, September 11, 2007 everyone in the USA who will be driving a motor vehicle is asked to drive with their headlights on during daylight hours. Though no explanation is needed as to why we are commemorating September 11, we hope more importantly to pay respect to the victims of that day, show our nation’s solidarity and show support for our men and women of the Armed Forces. REMEMBER! LIGHTS ON…..9/11
>A “Gross Building Area Regulation” ordinance is scheduled for introduction during the Village Council’s September 19 Public Meeting.
The ordinance, intended to curb the construction of “McMansions” within Ridgewood, will mandate that the square footage of uninhabitable sections of homes, garages hallways, entrance foyers, utility rooms, etc., now be included when calculating total property coverage.
Until this ordinance passes, uninhabitable portions of single family residences are not included in this calculation, which permits larger homes to be constructed without obtaining approvals from the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
Councilman Jacques Harlow pushed for adoption of this ordinance more so than any other member of the Council.
>The Village of Ridgewood did lthe right thing and entered into an agreement with Superfund Site Remediation in the late 90s for its parcel of property near the Tennis Courts that has ash underneath it.
The BOE did NOT enter into an agreement with this agency. Why? Don’t know. The agency would have monitored and advised the school board with regard to using this site safely.
The BOE also did NOT file a final deed notice as is required for the site. Why? Don’t know.
As of just recently the BOE decided to finally enter into such an agreement with superfund site remediation. Too bad it’s too late for our kids.
The agency monitored the field remediation in 1997 after ash was discovered in 1992. But the agency was kept in the dark and NEVER told or consulted with regard to the huge dig of the field to install an irrigation system.
Today, when I spoke to the Oversight Cast Mgr. was the first he’d heard of that major 2000 dig. This dig also undid the previous remediation of the field in 1997.
They were aware of the dig for the new addition but were told by the district’s contractors that all precautions would be taken.
Were they taken? Don’t know. We just have their word to go by. But now, there’s ash contamination very near the surface. So how did it get there?
>Citing requests received from the families of Ridgewood residents killed in the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks, Mayor David T. Pfund announced during Wednesday’s Village Council Work Session that there would be no Village sanctioned 9/11 memorial service held this year. Reportedly, the annual ceremonies were making it increasingly difficult for the children of some victims to emotionally adjust.
Although there will be no commemorative ceremony, portraits and capsule biographies of the victims will be on display in the Ridgewood Public Library throughout the month of September. The Library is located at 125 North Maple Avenue.
>Fall Car Show Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce The 14th Annual Fall Car Show will be Friday, September 7th from 6 to 9pm; around Memorial Park at Van Neste Square. Cars will also be displayed along E. Ridgewood Ave from Broad St to Walnut St. Classic cars to modern dream machines to motorcycles will be on display. Whatever your age or taste, there is a car on display for everyone!
September 11, 2007 In the Library Auditorium there is an exhibit of “Portraits” of the 12 Ridgewood residents who where lost in the terrorist attack on September 11th. The exhibit will continue for the month of September. We encourage residents to visit the exhibit and remember “our neighbors and friends”.
Planning Board Special Meeting – September 17th The Planning Board has scheduled a Special Meeting, Sept. 17th at 7:30pm in Benjamin Franklin Middle School, 335 North Van Dien Ave., Ridgewood. The purpose of this meeting is to listen to an informal presentation by specifically designated representatives of the Concerned Residents of Ridgewood, who have asked for an opportunity to be heard regarding a request for future amendments to the Village master plan and zoning ordinance as same pertain to the Hospital Zone.
Ridgewood Pool Project – POOL CHATS September 19th All residents are welcome to a “Pool Chat” on Wednesday, September 19th at 9:15am; 12:30pm or 7:30pm – Held in the Youth Lounge, Level 1, Village Hall. All comments are welcome.
Ridgewood Street Fair Come Join the Fun! Join the Department of Parks and Recreation for their annual Fall Festival on Sunday, September 23rd (rain date Sunday, Sept 30). Beginning at 12:00 noon, East Ridgewood Avenue, between Maple Avenue and Broad Street, is transformed to an outdoor market complete with tables of arts and crafts, jewelry, holiday ornaments, and more. A food court offers snacks of all kinds and special events are planned for the children. There is something for everyone! If you have any questions please contact the Recreation Office at 201-670-5560.
Our nation is in need of mathematically skilled citizens. On April 18, 2006, President Bush created the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The panel will advise the President and Secretary Spellings on the best use of scientifically based research on the teaching and learning of mathematics. The hope, to raise the level and production of home grown mathematically skilled citizens. Thursday, September 6th, 2007, the panel is holding its 8th meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. Ms. Elizabeth Gnall of Ridgewood New Jersey has traveled to St Louis to give public comment. We would like to sincerely thank New Jersey State Assemblyman David Russo for his office’s help and assistance in getting us our public comment timeslot at the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The content of the speech is appended below. It was applauded after it was given.
Liz Gnall, Sarah-Kate Maskin, Joan O’Keefe https://www.vormath.info/
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children”. So stated John Dewey in The School and Society. I live in the affluent public school district of Ridgewood New Jersey. But my district has a dirty little secret. Ridgewood Public School district is segregated – on one side of town, elementary school-aged children are taught math following a logical sequencing of topics, honoring the scholarly body of mathematics.
In another part of town the math is not taught but instead it is left for the children to discover and to construct. The math where for grades beyond Kindergarten the use of scissors, glue, paperclips, and any other object now defined as a manipulative, are deemed acceptable and encouraged. Sadly, this is the side of town where my children attend school.
One of my children was struggling to learn within that environment. As any parent would do, I raised my concerns to the school system but those concerns were met with “Our math is for ALL the children”. Outside of the school, I found a teacher and using a traditional math program, presented to my child math concepts sequentially, logically. My child practiced, practiced, practiced or as a fellow math mom called it, “drill & skill”. Lo’ and behold, my child learned math, understood math.
My other elementary school age child has a knack for math, readily grasps the concepts. Yet in the same school, I found he was bored. Once again, I raised my concerns, but because I live on that side of Ridgewood, the reform math side, the TERC math side, my concerns were once again met with, “Our math is for ALL the children”.
The same traditional teacher, using the same traditional program that helped my struggling child to no longer struggle, embraced my mathematically inclined child and advanced his skills, fed his thirst to learn and understand more, celebrated his intellect rather than leaving it behind.
From speaking to teachers, seemingly handcuffed by curriculum policy and fuzzy standards, to communicating with superintendents blinded by their ideology so as to NOT hear valid parental concerns, to emailing and confronting elected Board of Education officials with a preponderance of evidence that their reform math policy is not educating ALL of the children, to being interviewed by reporters who still erroneously cover the math wars as a battle of rote memorization verses critical thinking, to writing editorials to inform parents unaware because grades seem fine but hide what little is really being taught and learned, to writing government officials as mathematically capable citizens are needed to lead our nation in the 21st century, to creating a website and authoring a petition, and to having flown to St Louis to speak before this panel, all to advocate for a math education for my children, for their voices to be heard, for the same education that is available on another side of my town.
Across this nation, parents just like me, will ultimately triumph in the math wars because it is OUR children, not the children of the state.
And for OUR children, their education is more important and held more dearly than any social, political, economic or ideological driven agenda. In Ridgewood New Jersey reform math programs are on the agenda.
Parents in Ridgewood have been given no information to misinformation to biased information, and it has all been delivered as if it was truly “scientifically research based” information. The findings of your panel can hold great significance but only if what you present is crystal clear information.
My husband and I are the best and wisest parents for our children. Give us a choice in math education and we would choose a math education that is rigorous, focuses on content, is not driven by constructivist pedagogy, emphasizes the learning of mathematical facts, principles, and algorithms, uses the proper language and symbolic notation of math, and defines mathematical reasoning as the interconnections within mathematics. It is the kind of math that is being taught in other parts of this nation, the world, and in other parts of my town of Ridgewood New Jersey. It is the math I believe that will provide a solid foundation for my children so if they desire, if they dream, to become a scientist, an architect, or like their dad, a Wall Street finance executive, or like their mom, an engineer, they can.
Thomas Jefferson would have wept at the thought of a mathematically illiterate United States of America.
But I stand before you today, in recognition that I will provide to the future of this great nation three mathematically capable citizens that I have educated. And their success will be in spite of reform math.
CONCERNED RESIDENTS OF RIDGEWOOD ANNOUNCE A SPECIAL PRESENTATION SEPT 17TH AT 7:30 PM BEFORE THE VILLAGE PLANNING BOARD AT BEN FRANKLIN MIDDLE SCHOOL
RIDGEWOOD, September 5th / Stop Valley News/ Concerned Residents of Ridgewood/ News Release (www.stopvalley.com) – Concerned Residents of Ridgewood will be presenting at a Special Meeting of the Ridgewood Planning Board on September 17th, 2007 – 7:30 p.m. at the Ben Franklin Middle School auditorium, 335 North Van Dien Ave Ridgewood NJ. Members of the resident group will be making a comprehensive presentation on the impacts of the proposed H- zone changes and detail what actions the Village should take.
The live presentation is the latest round in a battle between Ridgewood Resident’s and Valley Hospital. The hospital has been attempting to have Ridgewood’s zoning ordinances and Master Plan changed in the Hospital’s favor.
Audience members are asked arrive 15-20 minutes early.
Opportunity for public comment will be provided on a separate night; date to be announced.
About Concerned Residents of Ridgewood (CRR)
CRR is a group of hundreds of Ridgewood Residents that are concerned about the proposed expansion on the Valley Hospital Ridgewood Campus. CRR is in favor of quality healthcare. They have a comprehensive website at www.stopvalley.com that provides an excellent overview of the proposal before the planning board and includes a link to the hospital expansion website. For more information visit www.stopvalley.com
Source: Concerned Residents of Ridgewood September 5th, 2007
>As many of you know much has been made in recent months of blogging and bloggers in the village. It would help to know that there are over 720 bloggers in the Ridgewood Area listed on blogspot.com alone. Some are fun, some cover a specific subject or subjects, some are personnel and some are fake these are called “flogs”. Many resident and institutions in the village have set up blogs to inform the public about particular issues, some for one thing and some against another. Most of these blogs are an attempt to legitimately champion there cause. As frequent readers of this blog know their are elements in the village that have attempted to silence this and other blogs or attempted through deceit with the help of some village institutions and residents to misinform the public on a particular issues. I can assure you that when the time is right this blog will inform its readership as to the nature and personalities involved in this deception.
>Any curriculum and school policies that specifically disenfranchise our male students WILL effect male antisocial behavior. Any outsider can look at the K8 curriculum and see how the males in this town are constantly marginalized. The reading materials are unabashedly feminist. Girls are great! Boys are insignificant, at best. The so-called math program is based on lateral “girl” learning patterns while the normal “boy” learns through vertical layered reasoning which is not to be used because it favors boys (and the rest of the world too). Males in Ridgewood are told from day one that the school system is a hostile environment and that they are the reason for everything that is wrong in the world. The State of New Jersey has been using taxpayer’s dollars since the early ninties to fund anti-male curriculums in this State starting with the New Jersey Project run by the misandroids Sheffield and Rothenberg at WPC. That program has been folded this year – thank God! Yet it has morphed into PRISM at Montclair State’ Women’s Studies Department. The deparment is full of third generation man- haters and they have alot of money to “transform” curriculums into female friendly and screw the males while your at it mistresspieces. It’s hard for me to believe that B&I with their connections to MSU and Rutgers and their own educational backgrounds could have been unaware of the origins and intent of TERC/CMP. I’d like to see the statistics from Travell and Orchard broken down by gender. I’d like to see the gender of all of the reportable incidents at the high school broken down by gender. I think those statistics will prove my point.
