Thursday, April 18, 2013
The Boston Marathon bombing is only the latest event that can rock kids' sense of security.
On the day of the Newtown, Ct. school shootings, my younger son arrived home from Ridge High School to find the television tuned to a news channel and me passing along the news that there had been a shooting in Connecticut, not far from where his grandparents and my brother live. Without intending, I burst into tears when I got to the part I had to say that so many children had been shot and killed. Of course, he was sympathetic. He also inquired about the safety of my neice, who attends school nearby. But then he urged me not to dwell on such news so I wouldn't get overly depressed. Therein lies some of the uncertainty of talking to children about local, national (or international) tragedies that are being blared all over the news. Some …
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Are there baskets at your house on Easter morning? How far will you let your children go in indulging?
For those kids (young or maybe on the verge of young adulthood) whose sweet tooths already may be tingling at the thought of Easter baskets on the way, this weekend looms second only to Halloween as an opportunity to indulge a love of candy. Certainly, now that today's parents are supposed to be dieticians along with everything else, we all try to be somewhat responsible in what we select, and the amount of candy mysteriously delivered by the bunny. (Did anyone ever specify how the bunny makes the rounds to fill these baskets?) On Easter mornings, I used to wake to a beautifully arranged basket wrapped in pink or purple cellophane and filled with my favorite chocolates, candies and — how did I ever find them so appealing? — wildly …
Friday, March 15, 2013
Bernards Township next year will join other county schools, including Somerset Hills, in having only one week off after New Year's.
Editor's Note: It's difficult to write this column without noting the sudden passing of William Zimmermann, who soon would have turned 20, in a March 7 car accident while on spring break in Mexico. For the many residents with children who may know members of Billy's family in Bernards Township schools, the tragedy seems just a little bit closer to home. For those of us who moved into Bernards Township part-way through our children's school careers, the extra weeklong February vacation may have been a bit of a mixed blessing. Sure, the kids loved having that extra week's holiday in February, and then yet another week off in April. But the school year always ended pretty late in Bernards Township — it's June 26 for this year. It would have …
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Is it one that's hard to track down? Or is it a type that you can easily find at your local bagel shop?
From what I can tell, bagel lovers in this section of the Somerset Hills seem to be obsessed with "everything" bagels. No matter what side of The Hills I head to in search of fresh, (ideally warm!) everything bagels on a weekend morning from a local bagel shop, there always seems to be a line ahead of me, waiting to snap up those desired bagels. If they haven't already done so. Now I think everything bagels — covered in salt, seeds and lots of flavoring — are pretty good, but with all that salt, I can take them or leave them. My kids are another matter. They want everything bagels. Whole wheat or not, it doesn't matter. But I better come home with at least two. Run on everything bagels They apparently are not alone. Last Saturday, I was …
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
What's your call when you're not sure whether to believe your child is really too sick for school? Are 'r & r' days ever justified?
There already are rumblings in this house about whether it's necessary to go to school both Thursday and Friday when the usual weeklong February vacation is cut short this week. It's assumed that some students at Ridge High School will be gone for ski vacations or other trips preplanned before those two days were put back on the school calendar to make up for time lost to Sandy. Needless to say, my sympathy runs from zero to almost zero on this subject. I note that it wouldn't kill my student to get a little reinforcement in his classes even if teachers must re-cover some of the same information when the lucky vacationers return next week. But I'm also listening with a jaundiced ear (if there is such a thing) to a slowly incubating sniffle…
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Bernards Twp. school board to discuss changes to school calendars — including possible deletions and additions — for next two years.
The Bernards Board of Education has always planned well in advance — the school calendars for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years already have been approved — but questions that have arisen this year about when students should begin, end and have holidays off from school mean that those calendars will be re-examined — and possibly changed. "Please be advised that changes to the 2013-14 calendar may be coming," Bernards schools superintendent Nick Markarian said in a special "Friday Folder" announcement to parents last Friday. Among one of the potential changes for both upcoming school years: starting school earlier to end school sooner in June. Markarian said he wanted to share with parents why changes to the school calendar are being …
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
It seems a long, long time ago that it was fall and we were awaiting Thanksgiving and planning for the December holidays.
It's hard to believe it's been less than three weeks since a enigmatic 20-year-old shot up an elementary school in Newtown, Ct., killing 20 children and six adults. Adam Lanza reportedly had at some point attended the Sandy Hook Elementary School. That news came just as we were all still picking up the pieces after Hurricane Sandy. Those of us who live here can't say we were surprised by another power outage in the Somerset Hills in 2012, following two lengthy outages tipped off by the October snowstorm and Irene in 2011. But were most of us really expecting Sandy to pack the kind of winds we more often see in news clips from storms down South? Did we think we would see giant trees stretched across major roadways for days on end? And then…
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Hurricane Sandy has left us with a deficit of eight school days to make up. What approach do you favor?
One can hardly say that school days are completely back to normal, even though Bernards Schools now are back in session for regular hours after two full weeks of being closed. Bernards Schools reopened on a two-hour delayed start schedule on Monday, just a day or so after the last school building regained power in a municipality where power outages dragged out for two weeks after Hurricane Sandy. Schools Superintendent Nick Markarian noted at Monday night's board meeting that the two-hour delay allowed parents and buses to find their way along streets that still had not been cleared of storm debris and wires, as well as to readjust in homes where power may have not yet, or had just been, restored. Teachers also needed to regroup after an …
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Is it time to give up that full week in February? Should Diwali be a school holiday?
This week's discussion at the Board of Education meeting regarding whether the school year ends too late in June and whether the Indian festival of Diwali should be added as a school holiday brought back to the front burner a topic that's been brought up several times. On Monday, two parents spoke up and reminded the board that hundreds of residents had either sent e-mails or signed a petition about the same time asking why with the township's Indian population growing, Diwali can't added as a day off on future school calendars. Diwali, the Festival of Lights, falls on Nov. 13 this year. But even before the parents' comments, Board Member Beverly Cwerner had reported that the board's policy committee had been planning to re-examine future …
40.6919
-74.544252
Bernards Township Board of Education
101 Peachtree Rd, Basking Ridge, NJ
/articles/moms-talk-should-the-school-calendar-be-overhauled
35142
/locations/7992839
Friday, September 7, 2012
Do you pack your student's school lunch? Let them buy? Or mix it up a bit?
A few weeks ago, Patch posted a story that set off a flurry of comments, "School Lunch Standards to Take Effect This Year." The conversation, which began about whether healthier school lunches should be mandated on a federal level — as they will be starting this year — later turned to a discussion over whether parents should take more control over what their children eat in school by getting ambitious and packing up a lunch themselves. As a parent myself who feels I have so far packed a zillion school lunches (and am continuing to do so for that Ridge High School student), I have to say that I think a combination of home and cafeteria lunches is the best way to go. To set straight one of the misconceptions that were floating out there, the…
40.68256
-74.563269
William Annin Middle School
70 Quincy Rd, Basking Ridge, NJ
/articles/moms-talk-pack-or-purchase-school-lunches
62485
/locations/7732008
LC
10:38 pm on Wednesday, April 17, 2013
My kids are older now, but were in middle school and high school (first year - she was only 14) for 9/11. Both kids had friends who lost their dads and there was a short period of time that my older child worried for the safety of her dad, who often did business at the WTC. We talked a lot. At the time there was much less social media, so it was easier to control what they saw and heard. I feel … more ›