the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Steve Beatty Secretary-Treasurer of the NJEA said in a Facebook post ,”At our meeting with the acting commissioner of the Department of Education and his staff last week (and our on-going meetings), we engaged in a discussion, albeit mostly one-sided, on the issues and concerns surrounding the re-opening of schools in September.
Our clear message was that there is no way the state can push to re-open schools in a way that would account for the health, safety, and educational integrity of our schools and all that enter them.
We have been consistent in our guidance and growing insistence along with our education stakeholder partners and an ever growing chorus of our members.
Keep the pressure up. On the local level by joining and/or communicating with your re-opening committee. On the state level by calling and emailing your elected representatives and the governors office as well as the commissioner and state board. We know the power of sustained and organized collective action. Our voice is being heard and must be heeded! New Jersey Education Association New Jersey Department of Education Governor Phil Murphy”
Sweeny is trying to build a concensus to conclude that our public schools will not be ready to open again in September.
NJ teachers union and lawmaker say schools not ready to reopen
By
Michael Symons
State House bureau chief
NJ101.5.com michael.symons@townsquaremedia.com
Some state lawmakers are joining the chorus led by the New Jersey Education Association calling for schools to remain closed in favor of virtual learning to begin the 2020-21 academic year.
The school year starts in just five weeks in a handful of Garden State districts, and legislators, school leaders and education advocacy groups say there are still many answers not being provided by the Murphy administration, which opted not to take part in an Assembly hearing on the topic Wednesday.
“There are many issues, and my personal opinion is that we should be possibly delaying school opening,” said Assemblywoman Pam Lampitt, D-Camden, chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee. “I’m very concerned about the flu season hitting in general and how that normally affects our schools. I’m very concerned about the quality of our schools and the HVAC.”
Assemblywoman Mila Jasey, D-Essex, said it would make more sense to use the time between now and Labor Day to collect and share information about how to get the most out of virtual learning, rather than scramble to install Plexiglas in classrooms and buses.
“We need to talk to the administration and get some clarity on whether or not we can agree that we’re not ready to reopen safely,” Jasey said.
“If just a single teacher or student gets sick or tests positive, the whole class will have to be quarantined. And then we’re right back to where we started,” said Assemblywoman Joann Downey, D-Monmouth. “Most likely we will have to close down and be remote, and yet we’re not prepared.”
Christine Miles, the NJEA’s associate director of professional development and instructional issues, said science dictates the steps that would need to take place to reopen “but the costs to bring our school buildings to an adequate level of safety for students and staff are astronomical.”
“It’s inevitable that adults and children entering school buildings will be asymptomatic. It’s inevitable that they will become infected, and if we don’t do this safely, it’s inevitable that people will die,” Miles said. “We cannot knowingly place this burden on anyone and allow them to carry that weight throughout the remainder of their lives.”
“As a state and a nation, step one is to neutralize the threat. We must test, isolate and contact trace,” she said. “And there can be no step two, much less steps five, six or seven, until we get step one right. So if brick-and-mortar school reopening cannot be done responsibly, it must be done remotely.”
Schools were closed in March in response to the coronavirus pandemic and remained closed for the final third of the 2019-20 school year. In late June, the state Department of Education said schools must have in-person learning to start the new school year but that most will have to offer a hybrid system in which some students are in school on a given day but others are learning virtually from home.
On Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy said parents and guardians will have the option to opt their child out of in-school attendance in favor of full virtual learning. Districts, which have until four weeks before school starts to get their plans in place, are now scrambling to survey parents about their intentions.
“We have about 300 responses of our almost 2,000 families, and right now about 35% to 40% are saying they don’t intend to have their student attend school come the fall, mostly I think out of anxiety,” said Jared Taillefer, executive director of the Great Oaks Legacy Charter School in Newark.
Millville Superintendent of Schools Tony Trongone said early response to a survey that began Tuesday shows similar results.
“About 35% of our kids, our parents are opting for the remote learning. And if you’re in remote learning, it will be for that semester. You just can’t go back and forth. There’s a lot of planning,” Trongone said. “I think it’ll be a little larger. It’s going to be about 40%. So that’s my one concern, what we’re going to do as far as planning.”
Trongone said that if 35% of students are enrolled in remote learning, and the other 65% of students are in school two days a week and home the other three, 75% of student time will be virtual learning.
“And right now, it’s like the wild, wild west in regard to what’s going on in the virtual learning paradigm,” Trongone said. “We need to have the protocols – not now. I know what’s important is health and safety. But we have to have an arc that talks about improvement of teaching and learning in regard to not standardizing but what is successful teaching and learning in a virtual platform?”
In the U.S. in general, and New Jersey in particular, intellects are darkening rapidly. It’s like an aircraft that is sounding a terrain warning but is descending so fast that the pilot can’t pull up in time to avoid hitting the side of a small mountain.
Our capacity for self-government is rapidly declining.
We are heading for the self-inflicted disaster of anarcho-totalitarianism.
The NJEA and the political puppet string-pullers that control it and every other state teacher’s union in this country must have determined that collective coordinated student walkouts and protests in favor of all things BLM and AntiFa would be too hard to instigate and organize in time to effect the November national election. So the decision is being taken in each individual state to convert the student population into a ready supply to fuel flash mobs. The school districts will be forced to keep the little shock troops at home with mommy and daddy who will be able to drive them to wherever they are needed at the drop of a tweet.
This has nothing to Do with any kind of political action. This has to do with health and safety of children teachers staffing. Nothing else. It’s my option if I feel if I want to keep my children home schooled. No one can stop me.
sure neither will the teacher layoffs
Michelle Malkin tried to demonstrate in support of police with a fully-permitted event.
Anarchists march nearby, ostensibly in the form of a counter-demonstration, unpermitted of course, but their true intent is revealed as they gradually approach Malkin and her fellow demonstrators, filter into the area the latter were assigned, and begin violently physically attacking them.
Local police observe but do nothing. Chaos ensues. The local police union eventually apologizes to Malkin on behalf of the lical police, but claims that the local police were constrained by elected leaders to the point that there was nothing they could do to protect them.
https://www.wnd.com/2020/07/one-nation-anarcho-tyranny/
“scramble to install Plexiglas in classrooms ”
Oy vey.
“the costs to bring our school buildings to an adequate level of safety for students and staff are astronomical.”
There’s no need to do any of that.
New Jersey’s top high school graduates, as a group, outstrip the academic achievements, performance, and potential of those of every other state. This is borne out by the fact that the cutoff for National Merit Semifinalist status, which in every state consists of the top half of the top one percent of PSAT test scores among Junior Year PSAT test takers in that particular state (the Junior year being the only year that counts for purposes if National Merit competition), is higher in New Jersey than it is for every other state, year in, year out. In fact, in recent years, the PSAT cutoff in New Jersey for achieving National Merit Semifinalist status has typically been only one point away from a perfect score. Mind you, every Junior in every U.S. state who elects to take the PSAT to get involved in the National Merit competition takes the exact same version of the PSAT test on the exact same day. So there is no funny business involved, and it becomes possible to do a perfect apples-to-apples comparison data between states to see which states are producing the greatest number of top-shelf college-ready students as a proportionate to the total number of high school graduates they certify in a given year.
So in this regard at least, New Jersey, with its combination of charter schools, county/magnet schools, regional public high schools, municipality-specific high schools (like in the Ridgewood district), and private schools, including religious/Catholic high schools like Bergen Catholic, Del Barton, St. Joseph, Don Bosco Prep, etc., and for all its obvious faults, has been going toe-to-toe with many larger and/or more glamorous states, many of whose residents may think they enjoy looking down their nose at us, and quietly trouncing them.
It is well known that New Jersey graduates filter into all the best schools, all over the country, and typically have no problem proving themselves worthy of the admission slot by which they were allowed to become part of their incoming freshman class.
That said, we here in New Jersey are about to wad up decades and decades of investment in blood, sweat, tears, and treasure building up our K-12 schools and their capacity to produce top-flight graduates, and toss the same directly into an incinerator. A total waste! All over a crummy virus that is predictably losing its zotch week after week, and moreover (despite what CNN and MSNBC is trying to tell you) has been proven to be treatable at multiple points of the infection timeline by effective, cheap, decades-old, exceedingly well-tolerated and safe medications, at least one of which is apparently also being used successfully as a routine preventative medicine.
Teachers and administrators should get over themselves, start taking a preventative medication if they are inclined to do so (as many, many front line workers have been doing, albeit many without admitting it), and get back to the important work they are being compensated so handsomely to perform before the single biggest motivation so many people have for moving to New Jersey and paying our exceedingly high property taxes for at least a decade or more evaporates into thin air.
We are quarantining the least at-risk segment of the population by keeping schools closed.
The risk to school-age children COVID represents is infinitesimal, but some parents claim schools should stay closed to protect children.
The median age of those succumbing to the virus is 78 years old. 99.96% are adults. None of this matters.
Gee, wonder if any 78 year old grandparents will be caring for their grandchildren this fall so the parents can go back to work? Given most playgrounds are Petri dishes of virus, couldn’t those kids spread the virus to their grandparents and parents when they return home? 🤦♂️
“couldn’t those kids spread the virus to their grandparents and parents when they return home?”
The science says this is actually not an issue with respect to COVID-19. In other words, statistically speaking, the risk of it happening is near zero. Are you down with the science, or are you looking for someone to give you that warm fuzzy feeling you love so well?
Thank god the NJEA and Dr. Fishbein are in charge of our schools and not you. You understand how virus spreads, right? Kids bring virus home from the playground and pass it to mom and grandma. Mom spreads it to her co-workers. Grandma buys groceries at Stop ‘N Shop and passes it to the butcher and cashier… presto, community spread and a second wave!
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that of the first 68,998 U.S. deaths from COVID-19, only 12 have been in children under age 14 — less than 0.02 percent. Nor is coronavirus killing teenagers. At last count, the fatality total among children under 18 without an underlying condition is one; only ten of the 16,469 confirmed coronavirus deaths in New York City were among those under the age of 18. That’s similar to the fatality rate for those under 20 in France, estimated at 0.001 percent, and in Spain.
The death of even one child is tragic, of course. Yet, it must be kept in mind that as many as 600 children in the United States died from seasonal influenza in 2017-18, according to CDC estimates, while the CDC’s estimate for COVID-19 fatalities number just 12. A just-released JAMA Pediatrics study flatly states: “Our data indicate that children are at far greater risk of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19.” If the COVID-19 hazard sets the new standard for health safety, the country will need to close its schools each year from November until April to guard against influenza.There’s two points that I want to make. One is that teaching is a young profession. In the United States half the teachers are 40 or less and a quarter of them are under 30. Ninety percent are under 60 in public schools.