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Ramsey's Board of Education Earns Certification
Ramsey School District has reached an uncommon pinnacle of achievement, not by students this time but by the people elected to serve them and the community. Ramsey’s Board of Education has achieved board certification from the New Jersey School Boards Association. The complex process can be considered in-depth training for volunteers, taking what the state already mandates for school board members and pushing it to a higher level. “Certification is not an easy or required path, but we approached it strategically because of its many benefits,” said Laura Behrmann, who was elected to a fifth term as board president on Jan. 5. “It has made us a more informed Board of Education, which will make us a more effective Board of Education.” Click headline for more information.
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Know the Facts - Legalization of Marijuana Presentation
Legalization of Marijuana: Know the Facts Wednesday, February 24th, 2021 Via Zoom 7:30 PM Registration is required at: RamseyMunicipalAlliance@gmail.com. Click headline for more information.
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School Calendar Information
Click headline for information on the 2019-2020 school calendar, as well as drafts of the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school year calendars. The intent is to approve the future calendars at the January 26 Board of Education meeting. If you would like to give input, please feel free to email the Board of Education (boe@ramsey.k12.nj.us) by January 22.
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Message from Board of Education President - Laura Behrmann
I never thought my role as Board of Education president would require so much knowledge about public health, but here we are. Big thanks goes to our staff, our students and their parents. We’re counting on all of them to make the next six months something special. As a mom, I’ve had to lower my expectations this school year. Dinner isn’t always timely, nutritious, or harmonious. Sometimes I fall short of adequate sleep; sometimes I snap when I shouldn’t. Everyone is making concessions to COVID, by intention or not. Thankfully, in Ramsey, our grounding comes from the competencies outlined in the Profile of a Ramsey Graduate and infused in everything we do. In this unusual year, I believe those goals and achievements are even more important. Adaptability, Empathy, Self-Direction, Creativity … It’s as if we drew up a list of universally applicable traits and aimed for them (and that’s exactly what we did!) as a way to help our students navigate whatever their future holds..Click headline for more information.
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Performing Arts in the Time of COVID
At the December Board of Education meeting, Mr. Ken Veit gave a presentation on the state of the Performing Arts in the Ramsey School District (see video below). Traditionally, December in the Ramsey School District means that it is time for concerts, school sings, and other musical celebrations. Unfortunately, this year these annual events are not possible due to safety concerns regarding COVID-19. That does not mean, however, that the performing arts are not alive and well in our schools. This year the performing arts staff has worked hard to deliver safe, quality, and creative instruction to our students throughout the district. More than ever, our Ramsey students and staff have demonstrated great ADAPTABILITY throughout this pandemic. Click headline for more information.
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Kindergarten Registration for 2021-2022 is open now
Pre-registration applications for Kindergarten for the 2021 - 2022 school year are now available. To be eligible for Kindergarten, students must be 5 years old on or before October 1, 2021. Applicants register online for their home school of attendance, either Mary A. Hubbard School or Wesley D. Tisdale School. Click headline for more information.
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Preschool Registration for 2021-2022 is open now
Registration applications for the tuition based Integrated Preschool Program for the 2021-2022 school year are now available. To be eligible for Preschool, general education students must be 4 years old on or before October 1, 2021. All children enrolled in the program will attend for 5 1/2 hours five days a week. Click above for important dates related to the preschool registration process and the pre-registration link. Click here for more information.
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Celebrate What's Right - A Look Back at 2020
I thought it appropriate to use the December newsletter to look back at previous newsletters to highlight the great things that have happened this year despite our challenges. I chose one picture from each month that I thought showed the spirit of the Ramsey School District and also highlighted how much this year has been unprecedented. Here is a quick preview of this "year in review": Click headline for more information.
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Support Services
Our School Counseling and Child Study teams understand how stressful everyone’s life has become throughout the COVID19 pandemic--both for our students and our families. The unique stressors this experience has put on us undoubtedly has challenged many of us to be able to maintain a sense of well-being and normalcy. We get it. Whether you have chosen to educate your child through our hybrid or remote learning, this experience is hard. We want to emphasize that our goal remains to support, in any way we can, both your children and you throughout this experience, regardless of the learning plan we are implementing as a school or district. As a team, we want every Ramsey family to remember to: 1) keep in touch with your school counselor. Let us know if your student is having any challenges that can’t be answered by your student’s teacher, and we will do our best to help you find solutions for them 2)hold family discussions often, in a comfortable place, and convey to your children that they are safe 3)encourage family members to ask questions and consider having a separate discussion with young children in order to address specific fears or misconceptions they may have. Please remember we have Mental Health Counselors available for both parents and students. Click headline for more.
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National Merit Scholars
Congratulations to Seoyon Kim, Robert Taylor, Sophie Cunningham, Abraham Song, and Abigail Lim on their recognition as Commended Students in the 2020 Merit Scholarship Program for Outstanding Performance on the 2019 PSAT/NMSQT! Click headline for pictures!
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Crucial Dates to Notify School of Request to Change your Child's Learning Instruction
16 days with the students are in the books, Back to School Nights are complete, picture days are happening, and soon Fall sports will start up. While at least 32 Bergen County school districts didn’t open with live instruction, and many aren’t scheduled to begin until October/November, Ramsey opened! While we had some bumps in the road, overall it has been a smooth opening. Thank you to everyone who helped make this happen. There is no doubt that we will continually adjust and improve our practices and schedules as we are able. We have already made tweaks in the lower grades, where virtual learning is especially challenging. Before rushing into a schedule change (remember only 16 days of school have passed), it is important that we learn from these experiences and get input from surrounding districts and our stakeholders. What is working well? What is not? This assessment will better inform our decision-making. Click headline for more information.
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Ballot Bowl Champions!
To encourage civic engagement, the State of New Jersey holds an annual Statewide non-partisan voter registration competition for colleges and high schools known as the NJ Ballot Bowl. The qualification for winning is the most amount of new registered voters. Despite the challenges presented this year, Social Studies teacher Mrs. Ann Alcaide with the support of Mr. Brennan Heffernan, Social Studies Supervisor, entered Ramsey High School in this year’s competition for high schools across the state of New Jersey. Mrs. Alcaide reached out to two seniors, Emily Peters and Liam Nelson, who have a passion for politics and led the efforts at RHS. After identifying all students who would turn 18 by the registration deadline (October 13), Emily and Liam sent these eligible students an email which contained a Google Form which assisted them in the process of registering to vote and finding their local polling places. Once students complete the registration form, Liam reported the weekly numbers to Rutgers University which tabulated the results across the state. While participating in such a worthy event would have been rewarding enough, we are pleased to announce that Ramsey High School was recently declared the winners of the High School Ballot Bowl for the entire state of New Jersey! On Thursday, October 29th, Mrs. Alcaide, Emily Peters, and Liam Nelson attended the virtual Awards Ceremony where the State formally recognized Ramsey’s accomplishment. In reflecting upon the work Mrs. Alcaide said, "It was an honor and a privilege to have our students participate in such an important event and to expand civil engagement in our community." Click headline for more.
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Schoology Parent Accounts Are Coming!
As you probably know by now, our entire district uses a common Learning Management System (LMS) called Schoology. Having a common LMS enables our students, parents, and teachers to engage with learning materials and their school community from the classroom and beyond. We use Schoology in our classrooms during hybrid and remote learning to enhance connectivity and communication across our district as students can digitally submit assignments, participate in interactive discussions, receive announcements and feedback, take assessments, and more. Student progress and activity is monitored by faculty to ensure a safe, secure, and controlled environment. As we announced over the summer, parent Schoology accounts are coming. We put in the request with the company to have these accounts enabled back in spring and we are excited to announce that the anticipated release date for Ramsey is Friday, October 9. The Technology Department will be in communication with you over the next few weeks on how to access and use your account. For now, please view the short video below that explains the difference between student and parent accounts. Click headline for more information.
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Equity is Not a New Goal for Ramsey School District
I’m glad to hear the community discussions that have sprung up since we made a semantics change to our district goals and backed that up with some action steps. Conversations are great first steps. The goal changed with the addition of key words: Achieving Excellence through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. As conversations develop into the exchange of ideas, it is helpful to use common language so everyone works from the same definitions. Diversity, equity, and inclusion may seem like reactionary “buzzwords” that can be easily politicized in the current climate, but they are not new in education. This isn’t a left issue or a right issue or any kind of political issue for the school district. Click headline for more information.
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A Consistent PreK-12 Platform
Our entire district, PreK-12, is now using Schoology , an integrated learning management solution (LMS) that provides course management, mobile learning, and support for system-wide communication. Schoology enables our students, parents and teachers to engage with learning materials and their school community from the classroom and beyond. We look forward to using Schoology in our classrooms during hybrid and remote learning to enhance connectivity and communication across our district. With Schoology, students can digitally submit assignments, participate in interactive discussions, receive announcements and feedback, take assessments, and more. Student progress and activity will be monitored by faculty to ensure a safe, secure, and controlled environment. We value your participation in your child’s education, and we encourage you to read Schoology’s Privacy Policy & Terms of Use. More information about Schoology Parent Accounts will be coming shortly.
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Building Empathy
For the third year in a row Mykee Fowlin performed at the Ramsey High School student orientation with the goal of creating an inclusive and welcoming school community. According to his website, Fowlin's "mission is to create an atmosphere of worldwide inclusion, not just tolerance, towards all people." Discussion questions included: 1)Using the concepts of mirrors and windows, what character(s) provided you with a mirror reflection of feelings you've experienced? What character(s) provided you with a window to see into someone else's feelings and experiences that are difference from your own? 2)Reflecting upon the performance, what is one small thing that you can do to improve the way you treat those who are different from you?
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Always Getting Better
To prepare for the 2020-2021 school year we focused our summer professional development on curriculum revisions and building our technology toolkits. This included: 1)Revising the opening unit of every course K-12 to include instructional technology components that can be implemented during either blended or remote learning. These components include, but are not limited to: Digital assessments, Screencast videos, and Hyperdoc Assignments. 2) 150 teachers participating in 36 sessions on blended and remote teaching across two weeks at the end of July. The first week was led by Ramsey staff and the second week was led by Greg Kulowiec of Edtech Teacher, our longtime technology consultant. 3) 100 staff members, including all of the newly hired teachers, completed the Catlin Tucker online course to prepare for online and blended learning.
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Summer Virtual Academic Courses now offered for Grades K - 6
The Ramsey Community School, along with teachers from the Ramsey School District, is offering "Stepping Stones" - virtual academic classes in Literacy and Mathematics for Grades Kindergarten through 6th. Click headline for registration form and additional information.
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Referendum Project
With phase one complete, we have now started construction on phase two. Work has begun at RHS (Electrical and Fire Alarm Upgrades), Smith (Performing Arts Addition and Science Lab Renovations) and the kindergarten additions at both Hubbard and Tisdale. The Fitness Center, Cadlab and Woodshop renovations at RHS will start later this Fall. Click on the Headline to see the latest pictures of the current projects.
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RHS Preschool On-line Applications Available
As part of the experiences for Ramsey High School students enrolled in the Child Development Class, Ramsey and Saddle River preschool age children are invited to participate in a preschool program that is supervised by Ramsey High School students and the Child Development teaching staff. Registration forms for the October 2020 preschool class are available on-line in both English and Spanish versions. Click headline for more information.
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