“I’m torn about these statistics. On the one hand, kids are bound to associate closely, and so have high risk of infection.
On the other hand, not sending them to school for what will be seven months in September, is clearly harmful to their development.”
“I’m regularly witnessing what I never dreamt I would on these parts – previously well mannered middle school children marauding about the streets of Ridgewood at all times of the night.
Tonight, at about 10:30pm from my vantage point on Franklin Ave, I saw an elderly couple walking up the street with a flashlight for safety. A group of about twenty middle school children on bikes came up the Franklin Ave from the Stevens Field footpath. They were wheelying up the road, and deliberately went head on towards the old couple! Had the lady not moved quickly enough they would have mowed her down. As it happened the gentleman was struck by the lead cyclist who was up on one wheel. Miraculously he rebalanced in time to not fall. They all laughed and called out derogatory names. It was disgusting.
Clearly the parents can’t lead discipline and structure alone, and it does indeed take a Village to raise a child. The lead offender I witnessed, no older than thirteen, probably comes from a good home with affluent parents, yet at this rate he is heading for a troubled life.”
“What with the openly abusive attitude towards the police, and praying upon the young minds by Marxist extremists and criminal elements, our kids need solid role models, structure and discipline, in addition to healthy outlets.
The current lack of schooling is killing off the children’s futures. Come on teachers and staff, get of your butts and do something other than follow your union’s maligned agenda.”
Government schools are the problem not the solution. Children’s futures have already been killed off by government borrowing, much of it for these Marxists indoctrination centers we call schools. Basic morality is dying and we are reaping what we have sowed.
I’ve seen some of those kids in the village and the park. Having been a misbehaving kid myself (and grown up ok), I’m less troubled by the above story. Kids of all stripes do silly stuff. They need their asses kicked to remind them who’s in charge. I do wholeheartedly agree on 2 points:
1. schools, even good ones like RDWD, need to tone down the preaching. Marxist BS doesn’t work and has no place in school. Focus on academics.
2. Schools need to open full time come fall. The union’s actions are disgraceful, targeting kids on a pretext of “safety.” What a joke. Who do they think they are? I don’t see grocery store cashiers protesting for “safety” even though they are way more exposed. Ditto for truck drivers who bring our food, amazon delivery, etc etc. I’ve lost any respect for the Union after this. The BOE need to start taking action on behalf of taxpayers. This is ridiculous. I’ve just received the fall schedule promo presentation from the school. A silly schedule that follows no logic and a ton of marketing material, inc video interviews. Our educators fancy themselves college professors or Fortune 500 salespeople, with all that pomp. They are not. They are paid a ton of money to deliver basic education to young kids. This entails being with kids! Not sitting at home on zoom. The parents need to wake up to the fact that they are being had.
I think it is best to teach children that the solution to a problem is to run and hide, declare themselves as victims with no power to rectify their situation and wait for the all knowing and powerful government to tell them what to do and save them.
Keep the schools closed.
Better safe than free…. RIGHT?
So much to address here: COPIED – “Come on teachers and staff, get of your butts and do something other than follow your union’s maligned agenda.”
The issue I believe you are speaking about is getting kids back in school, apparently so teachers can teach kids not to ride their bike in the road or act poorly in public. That is insanity and a deranged view of education in itself, BUT Let’s focus on what is pissing you off (I think.)
Teachers are not willing to go back to school and teach in unsafe conditions, simply put that is why they don’t want to go back to school. They don’t need a union to tell them this, they are intelligent people who can identify inherent danger themselves. If the BOE can show they are following the mandated guidelines they will gladly go back…in fact most teachers adamantly want to go back and don’t look forward to more months of unstructured ZOOM remote learning on asinine schedules structured by a hyper hypocritical crew who are too afraid to meet in person for an hour but feel it is safe to send them into a closed room all day with proven carriers. They’d like to forgo the myriad of calls from disgruntled, condescending parents at all hours of the day and night about how their kid’s are suffering, or their precious child needs extra help or demanding addt’l instruction as they don’t know how to use a computer etc blah etc- newsflash – Teachers worked harder during remote learning than when they were physically in the classroom. If you think differently it is painfully obvious you have not bothered to speak to this set of people you blindly condemn.
Let’s address facts – issues at hand. Perhaps you’d have something intelligent to say about the actual plans to go back and where they fall short. Here are a few thought starters for you:
– no testing on day one. how do you know who is sick and who is not. This is a disaster waiting to happen. If you think in a school system of our size no-one is coming in infected (whether they know it or not, asymptomatic etc) I question your mental health.
– suggested remedies for circulating air are opening windows and doors. (instead of fixing antiquated HVACS etc) Have we forgotten about any safety protocols that were previously in place? Have all of the dangerous people we used to lock out of schools now disappeared? Why is it now suddenly safe to leave kids exposed to the outside during class time? Will there be an increased police presence at all schools? and I don’t mean sitting in a car on a cell phone.
– looking at schools that have opened ALREADY and the subsequent awful outcomes. sick kids, spread of covid and ultimately shut downs. Or, alternately put, realtime scientific evidence. Can we learn anything or should we just say NJ’s #s are down so we are all good.
– the inevitable shut down or quarantine for 14 days once 1 person is sick that will disrupt the process and send everyone home anyway. Shouldn’t the time and your tax dollars be spent now to get it right..and in that process preparing a logical plan for remote learning that enriches kids. Making the best out of a bad situation.
These are just a few – if you want to send your kid in as a guinea pig just because you can’t stand having them home anymore (yeah I said it) or you feel they need a teacher to keep them straight because you’ve failed as a parent then you have bigger issues and are a true stain on society.
Focus your anger on a solution and perhaps we can all get back to ‘normal’ – whatever that looks like to you – no judgements, you’ve done enough of that for all of us.
Dear Almighty “-”
I always had faith in a higher power, with the innate wisdom to carry us through such a catastrophe as Covid-19. I do hope you’ll forgive my idiotic take on the local children and schools. It is truly an unquantifiable honor to be blessed with your presence here at the Ridgewood Blog.
“Teachers are not willing to go back to school and teach in unsafe conditions, simply put that is why they don’t want to go back to school. They don’t need a union to tell them this, they are intelligent people who can identify inherent danger themselves. If the BOE can show they are following the mandated guidelines they will gladly go back … If you think differently it is painfully obvious you have not bothered to speak to this set of people you blindly condemn.”
A. Of course! Far safer for teachers to hang out on the bridges of Route 4 together, with 2ft between them, while outright condemning the protocols for masks, social distancing and testing proposed by the school district.
“Let’s address fact … no testing on day one. how do you know who is sick and who is not. This is a disaster waiting to happen. If you think in a school system of our size no-one is coming in infected (whether they know it or not, asymptomatic etc) I question your mental health.”
A. Right again Your Holiness! Again, better to pig-headedly decide that it’s “no dice” and that Zoom teaching should continue rather than work with the schools in a more intelligent way. Let’s just keep the kids off physical school ad infinitum. You correctly questioned my mental health, as you rightly propose the very best of strategies to protect the mental health of the children.
“suggested remedies for circulating air are opening windows and doors. (instead of fixing antiquated HVACS etc) Have we forgotten about any safety protocols that were previously in place? Have all of the dangerous people we used to lock out of schools now disappeared? Why is it now suddenly safe to leave kids exposed to the outside during class time? Will there be an increased police presence at all schools? and I don’t mean sitting in a car on a cell phone.”
A. Goodness! I’m simply choking on my own bile in the presence of your insight! Do you work for that BLM thingy as well as the Teachers Union? It’s just that it seems a splendid strategy, if the teachers ever get off their derrieres, to bring the kids back to en enviromment more conducive to growth, and then have armed police officers standing sentry. This is an excellent suggestion that will keep any Covid-19 issues at bay (as we know Covid-19 is wary of police officers) and, not least, cause such underlying stress that the kids will want to stay at home, and the teachers can go back to zooming their way through the day (while fitting in some Route 4 co-infecting). Brilliant!
“looking at schools that have opened ALREADY and the subsequent awful outcomes. sick kids, spread of covid and ultimately shut downs. Or, alternately put, real-time scientific evidence. Can we learn anything or should we just say NJ’s #s are down so we are all good.”
A. Quite! Why bother modeling what works outside of the brain cell of the Union? Simply because Taiwan, Nicaragua and Sweden kept their schools open, and continue to, and that the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine collected data before most school closings took effect, and after. If schools were a major driver of viral spread, we would have expected to find more clusters linked to schools. That’s not what we found.” Since the lockdown, schools in many such areas have done well with standard protocols for masks etc.
Still, better to batten down and do what we do best in Ridgewood, eh? Well done again Your Holiness!
“the inevitable shut down or quarantine for 14 days once 1 person is sick that will disrupt the process and send everyone home anyway. Shouldn’t the time and your tax dollars be spent now to get it right..and in that process preparing a logical plan for remote learning that enriches kids. Making the best out of a bad situation.”
A. I like your level of certainty, this is what thoroughly convinced me of your universal wisdom. RHS just had their prom, and executed a complete protocol for the dance. It worked. If I didn’t know who you are, I would have said it would be better for the leadership of RHS and other local schools to agree on and set out their protocols than you and your Union. Then, that was before I was touched by your divine hand.
“These are just a few – if you want to send your kid in as a guinea pig just because you can’t stand having them home anymore (yeah I said it) or you feel they need a teacher to keep them straight because you’ve failed as a parent then you have bigger issues and are a true stain on society.”
A. I would so like to defer to you on this one as well, YH, but it’s a long-proven fact that children need to be socialized, need more role models than their parents, need structure and discipline. It’s not a failure to want your children to grow in a structured environment. It lends certainty and security in such times, and teaches them social skills and consequences they can’t learn at home. Otherwise we would soon be living in a “Lord of the Flies” scenario – something we are already starting to see. I’m so sorry for contradicting you with actual, qualified knowledge YH.
“Focus your anger on a solution and perhaps we can all get back to ‘normal’ – whatever that looks like to you – no judgements, you’ve done enough of that for all of us”
A. No anger, Your Holiness. Just an observation of one who has personally witnessed (from ground level unlike your good self up there in the heavens, YH” the destruction of a society. It started with adults taking a proverbial knee for causes unknown to themselves, and ended with children falsely accusing their parents for crimes, and neighbors being carted off to summary death sentences, executed by other neighbors.
Think it can’t possibly happen here? It wasn’t that long ago that the Puritan children lead their adults to do so in Salem. Those children were left to their own devices under the gaze of their parents, and quickly took great advantage of their apparent youth to foster malignancy.
The children need schools now. The teachers need to defy their union (and you) and go back. If they do not favor the Covid protocols, why not do what they’ve done in other countries and facilitate their own. I can quite honestly say that this was not the attitude of teachers during the Spanish Flu, and would never have been so, had it not become so trendy to be a victim. If we can’t muster some backbone, what on earth has America become? How did we invent anything, I wonder?