the staff of The Ridgewood Blog
Ridgewood NJ, as a follow up to The Ridgewood Blog’s previous article about the Ridgewood Board of Education’s controversial proposal for the introduction and implementation of a “World Language Curriculum” (see link below), our staff is happy to report that Board members formally rejected the proposal during their Monday night, 06/12 public meeting.
As was noted in our previous article, the absolutely bizarre proposal called for selecting elementary school foreign language course offerings based upon the language(s) recruited teachers were proficient in. Board members were told last night that if adopted, the plan would provide no assurance of course/language continuity in the event of a teacher’s departure. For example, if the German teacher left the district, a replacement German teacher might not be available.
The Ridgewood Blog suggests that under no circumstances would any professional educator consider basing course offerings in mathematics, science, history, English, etc. on recruited teachers’ proficiencies. Nor would any business enterprise base their product and/or service offerings solely on the skill sets of those they’re able to hire. So, why might we ask was this “World Language Curriculum” proposal even floated?
Are we missing something here?
This proposal should have never gotten past the superintendent’s desk.
For the record, Mike Lembo and Shelia Brogan both voted in favor of this ridiculous plan. Brogan even had the balls to say something along the lines of “wanting to always support what administrators propose.” Really Shelia?
Brogan and Lembos NEVER vote against the administration. They are rubber stamps. They just like the ceremonial part of being on the BOE.
Yet another example of the tradition of excellence!
They have been talking about this for years. The plan was shaky, but one willing to be evaluated and tweaked, now because of two board members (and one scared to even come vote). the schools are once again out of compliance. We will never get world language in elementary now.
What does tweaking mean? Fire the teachers after one year if the plan did not work and give half assed education to students??
The plan was unbelievably stupid. Thank god for the sanity of Saurabh and Mahmoud. Broken and Lembo are idiots. And for the record, Hyun Ju was not scared to come to the meeting. She had somewhere else she had to be, I’m sure. She’s not scared of anything.
well she didn’t show her face for an important vote, nor called in as she is allowed to now. She is scared because she knows what was coming to the podium that night….
No one cares about this world languages program at the elementary school except a couple of entitled residents whose kids are not in elementary school.
Just like the late start initiative which was lobbied by out of district friends of Nhyus to be in the news!!
I will hold off making a comment until my kid graduates from HS.