the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, At Mondays Ridgewood Board of Education meeting , according to the New Jersey COVID-19 Activity Reports, our region is still at the high (orange) level. Bergen County saw an uptick in cases last week. Within the district, we had 14 positive cases last week, and another 16 cases the week before. Over the prior week, we saw a 1.3% increase of students returning to school from remote learning with the largest gains at Orchard, Travell, Willard, Benjamin Franklin Middle School, and George Washington Middle School.
Regular discussions and analysis of data are occurring on a daily basis to help inform plans to open schools more than they are now. The district has planned for two Phase II options: (1) bringing all students back every day for 4 hours of instruction (no lunch) with remote learning in the afternoon (2) bringing all students back for a full day of instruction with lunch. The guidelines, agreement with health officials, and a significant decrease in COVID positivity rate for several weeks will factor into the option the district decides upon and when it will be executed. Implementing either of these options will require classrooms to have students at less than 6 feet apart and less than 3 feet in some cases. The decrease in distancing may impact quarantine requirements when someone tests positive.
A PreK-12 Survey will be sent out next week to gather feedback from parents.
K-1 Schedule ModificationsKindergarten and grade 1 students in the hybrid model are transitioning to four (4) hours of daily in-person instruction beginning March 22. Based on the results of the elementary survey and parent meeting, this model was overwhelmingly preferred. While socialization, independence, and developmental needs of our youngest learners will be maximized, some reassignment of students and teachers is necessary. Additionally, some classroom spaces will change.
Click here and scroll to 2:31:34 to view this portion of the meeting.
Click here to view the PDF of the presentation.
The district has come under criticism for have no plan to vaccinate teachers summed up by Boyd Loving in a Facebook post , ” While I applaud the efforts of the parent volunteers who are helping Ridgewood teachers get vaccinated, I am disappointed that our school district administration didn’t have a plan in place to do this themselves. The City of Hoboken, the City of Jersey City, and other municipalities throughout the state had plans in place so when teachers became eligible, the health departments of those respective communities worked with school administrators to make appointments for teachers to be vaccinated within the municipalities themselves. Frankly, this should have happened in Ridgewood, and it is an embarrassment that it did not.”
Other argued that ,”Parents should have an input into the reopening plans, especially since Fishbein and his crew did nothing except to lobby to keep all the Ridgewood the schools open without any meaningful measures taken when the outbreak began. More than anything else, that inaction led to the complete closing of an individual Ridgewood school no less than than 5 times over the last few months.
The use of plexiglass as proposed by this group of demonstrating Ridgewood parents to separate personal desk space has been implemented by many of the private schools in New Jersey that have safely opened. More importantly, HEPA class 5 filters should be retrofitted into all the school’s ventilation systems as this is the best way to stop the spread of this type of virus as it will return next winter when all the windows will be closed. The private schools in the area either have already upgraded to HEPA 5 filtration or are planning to do so before the 2022 school year begins. This expenditure should be penciled in as a line item in the school budget.”
-plexiglass divider btw teacher and students
– students less than 6 ft apart in the classroom and wear a mask
– students have documented assigned seats in every class to allow for coordinated contact tracing
– students have option to attend remotely as every class is live on zoom or google meet
-99% of positive cases are from students spending time w friends on the weekend
Stop with the excuses and stroking the teachers union and get our kids in school full time.
Kids are not at risk. (follow the science)
Box the teachers in plexiglass or tell them to stay home (with pay)(follow the science)
Let some young student teachers (again not at risk) come in and teach the classes (follow the science).
OR
Let the teachers union and hysterical parents throw away the future of the marginal students.
These poor kids are going to be so F-ed Up.
How come there are reported confirmed cases in the schools every week?
Parents – Stop the parties, Stop the sports, Stop the vacations. Rates will go down and schools can reopen full day 5x per week.
You have the power, You can be the change.
I agree that all teachers and staff should be vaccinated prior to opening the schools, especially with the uptick in cases in the Ridgewood schools over the last few weeks. Should students also have a negative test via the new in home, quick and accurate “in the box” testing kits our government is funding? I say yes and BOE should be all over this as other school districts have pushed to get students tested prior to returning to school.
Most importantly, Ridgewood needs to upgrade it’s building filtration system to the HEPA grade 5 standard as this COVID virus is so small ( .01micron) that it will be easily spread through the current legacy filtration systems now and when it will definitely return next fall when the classroom windows will be closed. Plexiglass partitions should have been the first thing the BOE installed at the beginning of this school year and it is embarrassing that the school administers of some kids in other lower income towns have protected their students better than the Ridgewood BOE.
Lastly, the BOE and the teacher’s union should plan for an optional summer time session in order to make up for all the learning that should have been obtained ,and by no fault of anyone, could not be accomplished because of the needed closures. Possibly a 5 week session 1 at the end of June or a 5 week session prior to start of the 2021-2022 school year. Cost aside, we the parents and educators of the children of Ridgewood own them nothing less!!!!!
Full time plan sounds good. Parents who are skeptical have a remote option. Very generous of school to offer. Fact is, no one will ever agree to anything. We have to go by majority.
@How come there are reported confirmed cases in the schools every week?”
Because kids are spending time with their friends on the weekend. Transmission is not at school.
Its not that difficult to get kids in school but the BOE, Ridgewood admin are drinking the same kool-aid and spreading the same fear narrative. The teachers union is holding our kids future hostage. They can’t teach at school but no problem hopping on a plane for vacation. Its a huge scam.
Honestly no one knows for certain where the kids are getting the virus from since parents lie on contact tracing interviews in the majority of cases. One thing that is indeed certain is the number of cases are now increasing in Ridgewood and not decreasing and without vaccinated teachers and negatively tested students, the number of infected individuals that walk the halls of the Ridgewood schools will only worsen to the point where another school closure will be inevitable.
The BOE needs to be more proactive in their actions to ensure a safe return and at a minimum that entails assisting all teachers and staff be be vaccinated and by installing plexiglass between the desks, especially if the desks are less than 6 feet apart.
The Board of Education should consider implementing an optional summer school program to augment the loss of the in depth quality education that our middle school and high school students have lost during this past year. Gorman needs to be a strong proponent and convince the teachers union of the importance of this type of supplementary education. New Jersey will be receiving over 6 billion dollars with today’s passage of the relief bill with hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked to assist the schools with their reopening plans. Many school districts will be seeking funds ASAP and Ridgewood should aggressively push for its fair share to support our students.
Cdc lowering social distancing to 3 feet. Get our kids in school full time