Ridgewood Public Schools: This Old Boat is Taking Water

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Village officials and their ideological partners that unveiled the full service community school to the district are watching the hourglass grow empty. In recent months Ridgewood Blog has reported on the collaborative efforts between Cottage Place and Village Hall leaders who are shaping Ridgewood Public Schools into the vision that  Democratic Senators Joe Lagana (D-38th) and Benji Wimberly (D-35th)promised they could deliver to the State’s Education Committee members and gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill. Nervous Democrats are relying on voters keeping their heads buried in sand so that these plans can be aggressively pursued across all of New Jersey’s public schools should leftist ideologues prove victorious in November. Regardless of the Election Day outcome, the blueprint for re-envisioning New Jersey’s public schools is now transparent; much to the dismay of partisan leaders and their corporate sponsors. Now the public is asking: how long until there’s nothin’ left at all?

Community Schools promote an activist approach to education where higher education institutions and external organizations leverage political and legal influence to filter students’ educational journeys through binary conditions that are rooted within the vapors of critical theories.

These centralized planners lead residents down a spiral staircase inside a panoptic environment. What they assemble along the pursuit inside this nebulous reality is the “banking” concept of education. These unified entities inject Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Critical Theory ideologies into the curriculum, policy development, and everyday experiences where students act as “meek receptacles” with little opportunity to grow beyond reactive and emotional thinking. Thus, leading to rising rates of chronic absenteeism, declining enrollment, poor test scores, increased special education referrals and mental health diagnoses, poor teacher retention, and police and internet surveillance systems.

“The Community School Revolution” authors say this framework “disrupts a status quo that imperils our future.” Residents who are realizing the impact of this pursuit are now realizing the strength of the intersectionality between Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, Cleary, Giacobbe, Alfieri, Jacobs Law Firm and elected Ridgewood officials. These private entities have helped Cottage Place administrators establish a centralized administrative state that governs by demanding strict adherence to political agendas and special interest groups over local community needs, family rights, and a child’s true educational development.

The sudden convergence of these firms and the close connections between local leaders and partisan lawmakers in recent years leaves residents questioning how someone could get so low in a building so damn tall.

Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates (HYA) is a national search firm that specializes in cultivating and promoting school leaders that have experience in DEI and social justice programming. HYA actively promotes its associates who have recently published books and journal articles on the topics of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and social justice. Schools across the country have raised alarms about this firm and its processes for delivering quality school leaders. HYA selects candidates from within a database that prospective school leaders pay into via a tiered pricing system. HYA markets a quick turn around for producing qualified candidates but this tactic has become controversial as townspeople across the nation are reconciling HYA’s high consulting fees with subpar performance, especially when candidates are known to be recycled.

The concern is that HYA promotes a candidate who has previously purchased a subscription and used their Education and Research Development Institute (ERDI) services, not the best candidate for the position. Companies like HYA are positioning favorable candidates into strategic locations across the country; however, communities are recognizing the growing trend of school board members deferring to politicians and private firms that are aggressively, albeit subtly, reshaping public schools into ideological institutions.

Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates brokered deals between the Department of Education and both Newark and Paterson Public Schools. These two districts have adopted the full-service community school model that Democratic lawmakers are pushing for communities to adopt throughout the state. Recently, the New Jersey Department of Education selected HYA to deliver a new superintendent to the Camden school district. Kevin Dehmer, the state’s commissioner of education, will be selecting Camden’s next school leader from a pool of HYA candidates without input from the community’s School Advisory Board.

Cleary, Giacobbe, Alfieri, and Jacobs is a law firm that uses critical legal theories to defend school districts and force this ideology upon taxpaying residents. This firm is establishing prominence among municipalities and school districts across the state in hopes that they can become the primary resource supporting the merger between school boards and municipal leaders, the first step in building a community school model.

Districts using this law firm are paying a premium for political access and proximity to power but New Jersey towns are taking notice. Senator Joseph Lagana (D-38th) is a Principal Partner and the firm has recently welcomed former Hudson County prosecutor, Esther Suarez. (Ridgewood Blog has reported on this conflict of interest) Lawyers from this progressive leaning firm instruct educators to view all prospective complaints strictly through a legal lens. Then firm representatives rely upon politically appointed administrative chairpersons to support their defense of educators who initially accepted their advice, despite having other inclinations. School leaders defer to this firm because of its political ties to favorable lawmakers and unelected state officials. These bureaucrats stand to gain personally by stretching legal definitions and dismissing past precedents in favor of the diversity, equity, and inclusion theories that political and legal activists exploit for profit. However, their social activism approach comes with an exorbitant financial cost to taxpayers who remain largely unaware of what transpires in board sessions.

Non-traditional Democrats, those currently aiming for the governorship of New Jersey; local Sherrill supporters; and necrophilic leaders have accomplished what they set out to do: break down existing structures and systems. Cottage Place administrators positioned their tactical partners into covert operational formation so that the district could be rebranded using narrow ideological beliefs. To tell you the truth: this large fleet coming up the river doesn’t look like they’re here to deliver the mail.

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