FAQ #5: Why didn't we split out the athletic fields?

Someone asked, "Why are you sneaking in the fields with the educational projects in the referendum? You're just trying to slide it past the voters."

Let me explain it. We talked at length about whether we should have one question or two. We wondered if the athletic projects should be in one question, and the building renovations in another question. There was some worry that the athletic projects would become the "lightning rod" issue, like the pool was way back when (in the failed referendum). I can tell you my personal opinion from the very beginning was that we should NOT have two questions. First, I work in direct marketing, and my first boss taught me that when faced with a difficult decision, if you give customers a way "out," they will take it. I always felt that if voters were faced with two questions, they would vote "no" on the smaller question in order to feel more in control. I felt from the beginning that our athletic facilities were in serious disrepair, due in part to their overuse in our field-poor village, and this situation truly needed to be addressed in a way it has not been for a very long time.

Second, statistically, 2nd referendum questions fail. That is a fact. You can read a history of New Jersey referendum questions by clicking here. By deciding to include the athletic projects in the single referendum question, the Board clearly felt that the projects were too important to sacrifice.

Believe me when I tell you, the athletic projects in the referendum have nothing to do with kids wanting to play on turf or parents wanting fancy facilities for their kids. It's not about wanting "luxuries." It's about these things only: 1) Ridgewood High School does not have enough outdoor "wellness" teaching space. That's according to the State. (And that's why they're giving us debt service aid.) 2) Ridgewood does not have enough field space for the number of children age 5-18 participating in recreational sports. We want to do our part to address this community shortage by putting the RHS and Stevens Fields into the rotation. (I experienced first-hand the benefit to my family's daily life when Maple was renovated, relaxing some of the competition for soccer fields and reducing our late-night schedule.) 3) We need to reduce wear and tear on our current BOE fields, which will keep them in better shape, reduce the work/expense needed to keep them playable, and protect our investment. One bonus to all this is the addition of the regulation 400M track & field facility at BF, which will allow our athletes, some of the best in the state, to train and compete in a facility whose quality matches their efforts. Another bonus is the RHS school community being able to walk out their door, come together, and either play soccer or lacrosse or football, or cheer on their classmates, boys or girls, as they compete.

I understand how some people may cynically believe we have a single referendum question as some sort of "trick." It's not a trick. (And by the way it's too late to change it for the Dec. 8 vote.) It's only this: the athletic projects are included in the question because they're important...important enough that we don't want them to fail.

Increase in dangerous "dip" in Ridgewood

Chew. Chaw. Dip. Packing a lip. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it from a number of reputable sources over the past few months, but it's a fact that the use of smokeless tobacco among Ridgewood youth -- primarily teen boys -- is rising dramatically. I'm told that athletes and non-athletes alike are using chewing tobacco at night, on weekends and even during the school day. It seems they think it's a "healthy" alternative to smoking. And it delivers a real buzz, without sneaking liquor from your parents cabinet or hiding from the cops in the woods.

Obviously it's easy to carry some dip in your pocket without anyone knowing. I'm not sure where the kids are buying it...probably older siblings are buying it for them?

If you've got teenage boys, please talk to them about this disgusting, dangerous and highly addictive activity. Smokeless tobacco is a leading cause of mouth and throat cancers. The kind of cancer that can result in the victim losing his tongue, jaw, cheeks, neck muscles...get the (gory) picture?

Below are some great website resources.

National Spit Tobacco Education Program

My Last Dip

Why Quit: Story of Gruen Von Behrens (sad, scary, shocking story to get kids' attention)

In my opinion, in many ways this is worse than teen drinking. No teen is walking around sipping vodka during the school day.

Has anybody else noticed this phenomenon growing?

Any ideas for how to stop it?

Christie promises even more state regs for schools.

Governor-elect Christie in today's Bergen Record:

“I refused during the campaign to come up with some type of slick, packaged proposal that people were going to say, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a miracle, there’s going to be no pain involved.’”

Instead, Christie’s plan for reducing property taxes targets government spending in general. The hundreds of town councils and schools districts in New Jersey where most of the money generated by local property taxes is spent are going to be held more accountable, he said.

We're going to be held more accountable? School districts already have accountability regulations that stretch from here into eternity. Piles and piles of paperwork. Micromanaging rules about what kind of paper we can print our newsletters on. So the strategy is no "magic" plan (or any specific plan), but massive amounts of "accountability regulations." This ought to be interesting...

Village Council meeting: Well, that was awkward

Members of the Board of Ed, along with Dr. Fishbein and Angelo DeSimone, Business Administrator, attended last night's meeting of the Village Council. Our purpose was to inform the Council about the upcoming Bond Referendum vote on Dec. 8. (Normally we invite the Council to attend a Board meeting for this presentation, but this year they declined. Everyone's busy this time of year and adding another meeting can be problematic. I'm assuming that was the reason. But we really wanted our Village leadership to be informed about the facts of this important issue, so we traveled to their fancy Village Hall digs.)

Anyway, Dr. Fishbein raced through his powerpoint in order to finish within our allotted 15 minutes. Council members asked what have definitely become "frequently asked questions:" 1) Why now? 2) Have you looked at alternatives? 3) Why not re-open Glen School? 4) How did the schools get into this shape? (Click on each of those questions to read my previous thoughts on these topics.) And that was it. Oh, yeah, Councilwoman Zusy thought it would be helpful to have the Village Clerk remind everyone about how the Village's budget was going to increase our taxes this year, too. That was helpful.

We stayed around for the fireworks when the Chamber of Commerce president and other representatives complained about the Village Council's actions on raising fees (parking, sewer, dumpster, health dept, sidewalk, etc.), in light of the terrible business climate in town and 35-40 businesses closed. It was so unpleasant and emotional and frustrating for everyone in the audience, at one point Councilman Mancuso commented that he could tell that the BOE members present were glad we ran for the Board of Ed and not the Council. Right you are, Pat!

People were shouting (on both sides of the lecturn). There were personal attacks. Most of us BOE members left after that. (Awkward!) Needless to say, I'll definitely hit my local Ridgewood stores when running errands today!

BOE visits the VC tonight

Superintendent Dan Fishbein and members of the Board of Education will pay a visit to the Village Council's meeting tonight, to present them with information about the upcoming Bond Referendum (please vote on December 8). This is a courtesy call to inform our Village leadership of our plans and answer any questions they may have. I'm told they've allotted us 15 minutes in the agenda, so I guess they don't expect to have many questions. Starts at 7:30 tonight.

New York Times Op-Ed on Teaching Teachers

At last night's Board of Ed meeting, Board President Joseph Vallerini commented on yesterday’s New York Times op-ed piece on America's teacher training programs. As I'm swamped with work today, I'm re-printing a post from the blog of Rachel Norton, of the San Francisco Board of Education, since her views are aligned with mine. Rachel wrote, "If you were a teacher, how would reading this make you feel?"

Our best universities have, paradoxically, typically looked down their noses at education, as if it were intellectually inferior. The result is that the strongest students are often in colleges that have no interest in education, while the most inspiring professors aren’t working with students who want to teach. This means that comparatively weaker students in less intellectually rigorous programs are the ones preparing to become teachers.

Rachel continues on her blog:

I am not sure that bashing the rigor of teacher training programs does anything to advance the author’s suggestion that the profession should attract students with better academic records. Instead, we should create policies, programs and compensation schemes that will convince the best and the brightest that we will give them respect and a decent standard of living if they choose teaching as a career. The piece does, however, go on to make some great suggestions, such as:

* Spend “less time studying specific instructional programs and learning how to handle mechanics like making lesson plans,” and instead encourage prospective teachers to continue studying the disciplines they want to teach – “It makes no sense at all to stop studying the thing you want to teach at the very moment you begin to learn how.”

* Take a page from programs that train therapists, which encourage students to videotape their sessions and go over their work with mentors and peers. Similarly, “young teachers need to record their daily encounters with their classrooms and then, with mentors and peers, have serious, open-minded conversations about what’s working and what isn’t.”

* Help prospective teachers learn “how to watch children, using research and theory to understand what they are seeing,” because disregarding “the developmental needs of our students it’s unlikely we’ll succeed in teaching them.”

* Finally, hire new teachers in groups of seven or more. “This way, talented eager young teachers won’t languish or leave teaching because they felt bored, inept, isolated or marginalized. Instead, they will feel part of a robust community of promising professionals. They will struggle and learn together.”

(Thanks for the assist, Rachel!)

Register to Vote 11/17 @ Ridgewood Public Library

The Village will be holding a Voter Registration Drive on Tuesday 11/17 from 4:30 to 9:00 p.m. It will take place at the Ridgewood Public Library. Register just in time to vote in the December 8 Referendum!

FAQ #4: Why don't we just re-open Glen School?

Occasionally someone will ask, "We already have an entire school just sitting across Route 17...why don't we re-open Glen School and solve our overcrowding problem?" Here's why that doesn't work:

Glen School has 15 classrooms. Five are used by our RED special-needs preschool program (which we are required to offer), and the remainder are rented out to a childcare program. The current set-up is ideal, because our RED students are able to interact with the daycare students, thus meeting our obligation and desire to educate the RED students in the most inclusive environment possible. If Glen were converted to a regular elementary school, we would lose the income from the childcare rental, and we would still need a place to house our RED students.

Glen School does not have a cafeteria, nor a library. Nor is it up to current code. If we wanted to re-open it as an elementary school, we would need to do costly construction to fix those deficiencies.

Glen School also does not have a staff. If we were to open it, even if there were some way to re-deploy teachers throughout the district, we would still need to hire a principal, secretary, nurse -- and these would become recurring additional costs in our budget.

So as attractive as it might seem, re-opening Glen would not be cost-free and would actually impact our budget year after year going forward.

Response to odd comment Monday night

Just wanted to clear up any confusion...an attendee at Monday night's community meeting questioned the need for additional classrooms at Ridge School because, as she said, "there's one empty classroom there already." Actually, no, there is not. There are no empty classrooms at Ridge. I feel pretty confident saying there are no empty classrooms anywhere in the District (but I guess I'd have to confirm that.) On the contrary, at Ridge, there is a classroom divided into four smaller "rooms" with temporary partitions (in addition to OT/PT in the hallway/vestibule).

But this does remind me that there is still some confusion regarding the proposed school expansions. Most of what we propose to add are small group instruction spaces. These are rooms where specialized services like OT/PT and other special ed services can be provided to small groups of 6-8 students. Other proposed space includes convertible "kindergarten-style" classrooms. (Kindergarten-style rooms are rooms that can be divided if necessary, and that have bathroom facilities.) These are the most flexible types of rooms we could add -- they can be used by regular classes, or by self-contained special ed classes, or they can be divided and used for smaller group classes -- and will be a smart investment to accommodate future enrollment trends.

By adding this space at Ridge, Hawes and Willard, we will be able to open-up space at these schools as well as Travell, Somerville and Orchard. And we'll be able to give our special ed students a continuum of service in a single location. Students will enter a school in kindergarten, and stay there until 5th grade, just like their friends. This will be better than moving them around every year...better than forcing children in one neighborhood to attend other schools because their home school is too full...and better than spending lots of money to send students to other districts for special ed services.

Community Referendum Meeting at GW tonight; Principal will lead a tour after

The Community Meeting on the Referendum is tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Auditorium at GW Middle School. I just learned that after the meeting, GW Principal Katie Kashmanian will lead a tour to showcase some of the needs at her school.

This is a good chance to find out everything you need to know in order to make a decision. Don't rely on assumptions or rumors. Get the facts...you are being asked to vote on a detailed question with important implications for our district and our Village. After this meeting, whether you vote "yes" or "no," at least you'll know you made an educated choice.

If you can't make it tonight, a repeat meeting will be held on Monday, November 30 at GW. These meetings were especially set-up for voters who do not have children in the schools or parents who do not attend HSA meetings.

You can also find lots of Referendum documents, including drawings of proposed school additions, detailed spreadsheets of renovation costs, bond financing information, and much more, at the District website click here.