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With July 29th filing deadline approaching, no candidates yet for three open BOE seats

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, as of 0900 hours on Tuesday, July 16th, the Bergen County Clerk’s Office has not received a single nominating petition from anyone interested in being a candidate for one of the three (3) available Ridgewood Board of Education (BOE) seats to be decided in November’s general election.

Continue reading With July 29th filing deadline approaching, no candidates yet for three open BOE seats

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UPDATE: No Mention of Trustees Ethics Violation at Ridgewood Board of Education Meeting

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, at Monday nights Ridgewood Board of Education meeting , the ethics complaint on former Ridgewood Board member Jim Morgan’s was read into the minutes. Interesting that current Board member Sheila Brogan who appealed the ethic complaint against her and her appeal was denied was not also read into the record . Over the years the Ridgewood blog has commented on Ms. Brogan’s “teflan”  record.

Continue reading UPDATE: No Mention of Trustees Ethics Violation at Ridgewood Board of Education Meeting

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Hyunju Kwak Named Ridgewood School Board President

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, at Monday night Ridgewood Board of Education meet , the Board reorganized . Sheila Brogan, Hyunju Kwak, and Muhammad Mahmoud were sworn in for a three-year term, followed by nominations and the election of a new Ridgewood School Board president and vice president. Hyunju Kwak was elected president, and Michael Lembo was elected vice president.  The Ridgewood school district is the largest in Bergen County with 5,705 students .

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League of Women Voters of Ridgewood to Host Candidate Forums Ahead of the November Election

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, the League of Women Voters of Ridgewood will be hosting two candidate forums ahead of the November 2nd election.

Continue reading League of Women Voters of Ridgewood to Host Candidate Forums Ahead of the November Election

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Ridgewood Superintendent Search Survey Closes Today

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, The Ridgewood Board of Education requests input from all stakeholders as they recruit, interview, and select our next superintendent. Your feedback is important.

Continue reading Ridgewood Superintendent Search Survey Closes Today

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Sheila Brogan Just got a one year extension to her original term using legal maneuvers

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Sheila Brogan Just got a one year extension to her original term using legal maneuvers
Ridgewood board of education member Sheila Brogan has been serving on the BOE for over 20 years and is probably the biggest reason for current state of high taxes in Ridgewood.

Continue reading Sheila Brogan Just got a one year extension to her original term using legal maneuvers

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Ridgewood BOE waiting for teachers to Ratify

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September 20, 2016

Dear members of the Ridgewood community:

We are pleased to announce that on Tuesday, September 13, the negotiating committees for the Ridgewood Board of Education and the Ridgewood Education Association (REA) signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for a three-year contract for the period July 1, 2015 through June 30, 2018.

This MOA lists the new contract terms, which will be made public once the contract is ratified by the teachers and voted on by the Board at a regular public meeting.  The contract becomes effective once the Board approves it.

During this prolonged negotiation, many community members, parents, and students shared their ideas and perspectives with us. While opinions varied, the overriding messages were consistent. Our community cares deeply about the quality of our schools. The educational programs and extracurricular activities offered to our students are highly valued as are our teachers, and the contract should be fair and balanced.

As we complete the tasks needed to finalize the contract, we ask for your continued patience and understanding. The good news is that the disruption caused by the unsettled contract is behind us and we can once again focus our attention on what unites us as a community, the education of our children and our excellent schools.

Ridgewood Board of Education
Sheila Brogan, President
Vince Loncto, Vice President
Christina Krauss
Jim Morgan
Jennie Smith Wilson

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Readers say Sheila Brogan has a great deal to answer for and should stop running for reelection to the Ridgewood Board of Education

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Sheila Brogan horrified the assembled multitude that night at BF and sure enough, her comments have returned to haunt us many times over. They were quickly turned into PowerPoint slides by Valley’s attorneys. Our elected BOE hires the Superintendent of Schools, not the reverse, and should have stood firm, acting as a staunch defender of students’ and teachers’ health, safety, and ability to learn and teach in peace and health. That defection was one of the harshest blows in this nearly decade-long fight to prevent Ridgewood from becoming Valleywood. Ms. Brogan’s failure to support the children and teachers was a terrible and unexpected blow. She has a great deal to answer for and should stop running for reelection to the BOE.

ANY psychologist would never (unless paid by Valley) have backed up her testimony, and they know it. And she was elected to look out for the children in this district ? It was a pathetic statement then, and it still is.

Brogan is ridiculous. She talks about previous construction in the schools while construction took place. What is being proposed here is a minimum of 6 years of noise, construction, traffic, dust, etc. That’s a world of difference from any project previously undertaken in the schools. And even if it was, to whom did she speak, in order to come to the conclusions she posted. She’s unqualified.

When did she become a construction or engineering expert? She’s a publicity hound who just loves to get her name or photo in the papers – well she accomplished her goal big time with her absurd comments. Since she has no kids in the schools, how objective do you think her comments are? She and her pal Sonnenfeld are a real pair. Sonnenfeld tells her what the party line is, and Brogans spits it out

I think you are giving way too much credit to the effect that ridiculous speech Mrs. Brogan gave on the members of the PB, or anyone else that has seen it. Any sane adult easily came to the conclusion that she was either getting something from Valley, getting even with somebody, or whatever. The only thing the tape of that “opinion” should be used for is to show how low Valley is willing to go for any type of support from residents of this community. It really was an insult to the intelligence of any parent of a Ridgewood student. Quite frankly, I don’t know why anyone has not called for an apology.

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Ridgewood School Board says they are ‘committed’ to settling contract

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Board ‘committed’ to settling contract

JANUARY 29, 2016    LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 2016, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS

Board ‘committed’ to settling contract

to the editor:

At Monday’s Board of Education meeting, 20 Ridgewood teachers spoke at the podium. They spoke passionately about their love of teaching and their deep commitment to our children. With pride, they enumerated the educational opportunities that Ridgewood provides and acknowledged the exceptional quality of our district. They implored the Board to reach a “fair” settlement and expressed their frustration that the contract remained unsettled.

The Board is sympathetic to the concerns expressed by our teachers and shares the desire to complete negotiations as quickly as possible. The Board has made every effort to listen to the union’s concerns and address them.

On Jan. 20 at our last negotiation session, the Board made a new comprehensive proposal that would have increased the take-home pay of every teacher through a combination of salary increases and revisions to the health care plans offered to the REA members. The Board also offered to discuss several ideas to ameliorate the impact of the 35 percent employee health care premium contributions paid by the highest paid staff.

These proposals address the teachers’ primary concerns while staying within the district’s financial capabilities.

Some of the teachers’ comments questioned Ridgewood Public Schools’ spending on improving curriculum, professional development, technology and eBooks in our elementary school libraries. While our teachers and the work they do are key to making Ridgewood the superior district that it is, we know that their jobs would be exponentially more challenging if they did not have new and improved textbooks, revised curriculum and the technology enhancements such as Chromebooks.

As the Board of Education, we are committed to balancing these competing costs and the need to continue to deliver a well-balanced educational program to our students. With the state-imposed hard cap that restricts district property tax revenue increases to 2 percent or less of the prior year taxes, this is a very tough assignment.

We have had numerous meetings with the REA team and are willing to meet at any time to negotiate all components of the contract.

In the meantime, we will move forward to fact-finding. Next week, both sides will have the opportunity to submit their positions, arguments and exhibits to an independent, state-appointed fact-finder. We expect the fact-finder to issue his non-binding recommendations by the end of April.

This Board is committed to settling an equitable new contract that treats our teachers fairly, is respectful of the taxpayers and maintains the financial integrity of the district. Most importantly, we want to end the unrest that drains our staff’s energy so that they can focus on the important job of teaching our children, which is something that they do exceptionally well.

We are united with the teachers in the goal of continuing Ridgewood’s “Tradition of Excellence.”

Sheila Brogan

Vince Loncto

Jim Morgan

Christina Krauss

Jennie Smith Wilson

Ridgewood Board of Education

https://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-letters-to-the-editor/ridgewood-news-letter-board-committed-to-settling-contract-1.1501661

 

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Addressing PARCC and Common Core

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Addressing PARCC and Common Core

APRIL 3, 2015    LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2015, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS

Addressing PARCC and Common Core

To the editor:

Over the course of the last eight months, there have been some letters to the editor demonizing the Common Core State Standards and PARCC tests. One such letter appeared last week.

Unfortunately, it contained some misinformation, and also expressed some opinions which, in our view, are unfounded. So let’s be clear about the facts.

The implementation of Common Core State Standards and PARCC testing resulted in little if any incremental spending in the district. Curriculum upgrades and revisions take place routinely and systematically over a five-year cycle. Since New Jersey adopted the Common Core State Standards in 2010, alignment to the Common Core was taken, in stride, as part of that cycle.

No technology upgrades were necessary to implement the PARCC assessment. Technology improvements were already imbedded in the district’s technology plan, and were not undertaken to support PARCC.

Technology’s purpose in education is to take advantage of the best tools and software designed to augment instruction. The introduction of Chromebooks and Google-docs software has been enthusiastically welcomed by both teachers and students. They are recognized for their value in providing for collaborative study and student-teacher interaction and many other innovations.

The Board of Education, administrators, and teachers have a solemn duty to provide our students with the best opportunity to succeed in college and careers. College students constantly use their computers in their residences, the student union, and almost everywhere else. This applies to students of the liberal arts as well as the sciences.

Computer use is not incompatible to fostering a love of learning and development of critical thinking skills. It is a tool that enhances those qualities. We cannot be satisfied with preparing our students to live in some “technology-lite” society that no longer exists. If we want our students to compete globally, we need to prepare them for that reality.

Our media centers have not been converted to “test prep centers.” We have not diminished our excellent social studies, science or arts curriculum to focus on these assessments. Our students are not “watching lots of movies” because “their teachers are too busy to teach as much as they used to.” Movies are used for educational purposes and yes, at times, for rewards, but never because teachers are too busy to teach.

We have not devoted “endless hours” practicing for the PARCC tests. We did expose students to the assessment experience they were going to encounter just as some parents choose to expose their children to SAT, AP and ACT assessment.

Regarding “corporate greed,” we have textbooks and equipment with company logos throughout our schools. We use competitive pricing for all our purchases. Is a private sector company making a profit by serving the district somehow unethical? In our free enterprise system, which we teach to our students, opportunity to profit stimulates entrepreneurship, innovation, product development and efficiency. Success breeds job creation, prosperity and economic growth. This is a virtuous circle, not a “stench.”

These views are ours individually, not on behalf of the Board of Education.

Sheila Brogan and Vincent Loncto

Ridgewood

https://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-letters-to-the-editor/letter-to-the-editor-addressing-parcc-and-common-core-1.1302076

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Readers not very forgiving of BOE lack of Action in at lest voicing skepticism and Protecting Students of BF and Travell .

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Readers not very forgiving of BOE lack of Action in at lest voicing skepticism and  Protecting Students of BF and Travell .

So sad that The Record (in an article posted to its website today) is trying to make it seem like Sheila Brogan (the Ridgewood Board of Education President) is happy about the Planning Board decision. She actively helped Valley Hospital by claiming that the massive 6-10 year construction proposed by Valley would have no impact on the education of Ridgewood students at the B.F. Middle School right next door to Valley. We won’t forget, Sheila.

Her testimony was disappointing and was not in line with the BOEs fiduciary duty to protect the students. Forget about the construction period, the final product of a 94 foot tall building and a building moved over next to BF on top of the current parking lot would impact the students forever. And the track and field participants.

Please explain how her saying “construction would have no impact on the education of kids at B.F and Travell” shows that she means well? If you’re saying she “meant” to help Valley, then I understand. But having BF and Travell kids go thru 6 years of construction doesn’t indicate that she means well. Remember this at election time ,br><br?>Microsoft Store