A Thanksgiving Message from the Superintendent of Schools
First and foremost, I would like to give thanks to everyone in the North Bergen School district Family. This includes our students who are our main focus, our parents who are our partners, our teachers who are the vehicle for what we do, our support staff, and our principals, directors, and supervisors who are the guides of our process. Additionally, there are many others in our school family to thank like our security guards who keep us safe, our maintenance team, custodians and matrons who keep our buildings clean, sanitized and warm, our clerks and aides who support the staff and students, the heroes of the day that is our technology staff, and our resource police officers and the entire North Berge Police Department for all they do. I especially want to thank all of the staff at the central office for all they have done during this trying time.
This is a Thanksgiving like no other we have experienced before. Many events have been unprecedented as we move along the school year. Please take some time to think about those of us who have had issues throughout this pandemic. If you get the chance, give friends and neighbors a call or a message to check up on how they are doing or just say hello and brighten their day.
I’d like to make this analogy for you. Think back to the basic devices our parents and grandparents used to cook our holiday meal and then consider the culinary tools available to us now. The advent of deep frying the bird, using immersion blenders for sauces, placing items in an air fryer for faster and more even cooking, and the use of technology help when we make a mistake in our cooking process have all perhaps changed the way we cook but the end result is the same – a delicious dinner. It is similar to the way we have evolved our teaching and learning process by the use of technology and altering the way we assess. I think the biggest change is how we are networking and sharing information and techniques to support each other. Learning is still taking place, albeit through quite a different process. I thank each of you for your efforts.
Lastly, we were in the process of moving toward students coming back to in-person education (phase 3); unfortunately, the positivity rate made us alter the route we were on. We can look at five phases where Phase 1 is all remote learning (where we are at the moment), Phase 2 is a partial return to address the students with the most pressing needs, Phase 3 is a hybrid model where we will have two cohorts of students, Cohort A on Mondays and Tuesdays, and Cohort B on Thursdays and Fridays, Phase 4 is a modified all in-person model, and finally Phase 5 will be full in-person learning. We are looking to move to Phase 2 based on guidance from the North Bergen Department of Health in consultation with the Superintendent’s Advisory Committee. We will keep you updated through a video message, emails, texts, and social media posts.
On a lighter note, I would like to share some quotes about Thanksgiving:
"A new survey found that 80 percent of men claim they help cook Thanksgiving dinner. Which makes sense, when you hear them consider saying 'that smells good' to be helping." Jimmy Fallon
“If you stand in the meat section at the grocery store long enough, you start to get mad at turkeys. There’s turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Someone needs to tell the turkey, ‘Man, just be yourself.” Mitch Hedberg
"An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day." Irv Kupcinet
“Thanksgiving dinners take 18 hours to prepare. They are consumed in 12 minutes. Half-times take 12 minutes. This is not a coincidence.” Irma Bombeck
“You can tell you ate too much for Thanksgiving when you have to let your bathrobe out.” Jay Leno
“I’m from Canada, so Thanksgiving to me is just Thursday with more food.” Howie Mandel
"There's always something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. Even if it's just not being a turkey." Unknown
“Thanksgiving Day, man—not a good day to be my pants.” Kevin James
