Ridgewood Community School Model: Discrimination, Exclusion, and Indoctrination

A Minor. Meso Laceration

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood Schools officials are tryin’ to strike a cord with Village residents by celebrating their Vision 2030 plans; however, the sounds across the village are of records scratching not the melodies of the Board’s allegedly lip synched hit song.

Ridgewood educators are pursuing a politically partisan model of public school reform which has village residents asking “what they talkin’ ‘bout?” When residents start inquiring at the next BOE meeting or Superintendent virtual coffee, educracts will likely respond saying “nothin’.”

They may be able to shape the story how they want, using town folk to pass this political agenda but colleagues and Village residents are wondering: are Ridgewood school officials really doing what is right for our children or are they distributing the reigns of power into the hands of preferred local political and special interest groups?

There are certainly levels to it, you and I know. Each requires transparency. And humility.

There are four stages for developing a Community School. The first is the “exploring” stage where “if only” dreaming is encouraged as the starting point for pursuing this new educational model. Next, school administrators work through the “emerging stage” where visions and goals emerge. According to the National Center for Community Schools’ Building Community Schools: A Guide for Action this is where “a decision is made to start the transformation of a school or schools by introducing some services, securing initial funding and establishing partnerships.” (p. 33). The truth of the matter is that Ridgewood School administrators are doubling down to pass the same agenda as politicians. Now, these are actions that’s gotta be placed on neighborhood watch.

In the Community School model, individual families must navigate through additional bureaucratic structures to get the academic, social, and emotional support their child actually needs. A “Whole child” approach to education does not mean addressing the individual needs of a child. It means aligning and strengthening the support systems that influence a child’s development. Discrimination, Exclusion, and Indoctrination (DEI) activists implement the social and psychological theories of Urie Bronfenbrenner and Michel Foucault, among several others, to develop the “whole child.”

To the uninitiated, a Community School model of education is the song that everyone dances to but that no one can stand. It is a framework that starts slowly, but soon gets out of hand. In this setting, schools become the central social hub of the community. Children receive extended learning opportunities, internship experiences, health services, and more athletic opportunities. This is simply the offer Village residents accepted, not through partnership, but without fully realizing they entered into a negotiation for implementing a social contract theory.

In return for more extracurricular activities and community partnerships, Village residents will have to live with the facts that they have negotiated unwittingly for an educational system that is more similar to Jeremy Bentham’s vision for prisons. Michel Foucault favors the panoptic prison structure where children’s levels of fear and anxieties increase as they exist in an environment of surveillance, normalization, and examination and conform to the behavioral expectations of a centralized power.

The district’s contractual partnership with Montclair State University will assist with normalizing these illegal practices into the day to day experiences of children ages 3-21. Ridgewood Public Schools are now barracks for cultivating docile, conforming subjects. In such environments, discipline concerns increase, attendance suffers, school refusal becomes an increasing concern, and more generalized anxieties and fears begin to manifest in an increasing number of people living under such conditions. As a result, the public advocates for increased police presence, zero-tolerance approaches with discipline, security cameras in buildings and Gaggle settings on student’s school issued technological devices. Administrators then favor a more therapeutic approach to education with increased counseling services, mental health supports, and social-emotional instruction.

The levels to this framing includes the district awarding a $40,000 contract with Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates to help craft the district’s Vision 2030 plans. This consulting firm is known to work with schools that have the Full Service Community School model (FSFC) in place. Specifically, in New Jersey, HYA has partnered with Cherry Hill School District, Moorestown Schools, Holmdel School District, and Paterson Public Schools. Each district utilizes the Full Service Community School (FSCS) program that has been promoted by former President Joe Biden, teachers unions, and Democratic state legislators, and within towns where political demographics lean towards the political left.

Ridgewood administration may have been in search of additional federal funding, but can no longer rely on the Federal Department of Education distributing monies to public schools that engage in these illegal practices. Instead, administrators have shifted focus to support New Jersey’s partisan bill that provides grant money to districts looking to implement the Full Service Community School model. One requirement, under a bill sponsored by Senators Ruiz and Turner for these districts, is that they partner with a New Jersey university.

When planning for the 2024-2025 school year, Ridgewood Public Schools reviewed “equity audit” proposals from several New Jersey universities, then agreed to a $25,000 partnership with Montclair State University. Montclair State University is included in the District’s current and future plans and is needed to secure state grant funding should the partisan Community School Pilot Program be implemented.

Level two requires an understanding of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. His theories, popular in educational and social work circles, consider how power and structures can influence the interrelationships of a child’s development. First, a child is influenced by the microsystems, the immediate environment that influences a child’s development. Family, school community are the traditional microsystems. The “whole child,” “whole community” theory exists to structure these unique settings into a coordinated environment of conformity, again using surveillance, normalization, and examination tactics that current day public educators and politicians have come to rely upon. It is within the mesosystem that involves the interconnectedness of a child’s microsystems where educators use centralized regulations to control young individuals and families.

Village residents are realizing a percussion rinse is signaling a transition into another song is materializing. This level of knowledge and understanding is required for the public’s ability to remove the scaffolding that Ridgewood Public School employees have erected around its proud tradition of educational excellence. The Community School Model is a hit song for politicians and bureaucrats who disseminate power to preferred legal, political, and social activist groups. It is a track that should not make the album if educators are truly invested in the educational, social, and emotional needs of all children.

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