Paraprofessional Job Vacancies Drop In Ridgewood, District Officials Said

RIDGEWOOD, NJ — As of Friday, the Ridgewood Public Schools had only five vacant paraprofessional positions left in the district; the number of open positions had fallen since the Nov. 7 meeting, district officials said.

Some paraprofessionals and substitute school aides were hired on site at a "very successful" job fair held last week in the district, Director of Human Resources Jaime Cangialosi-Murphy said at Monday's meeting.

"It is a team effort," Cangialosi-Murphy said. "We would not be able to do this, if everyone was not collaborating."

A question was asked by an Applied Behavior Analysis aide at Ridge Elementary School why the district would not opt to focus more on hiring permanent teacher aides, instead of substitutes.

"If you hire permanent aides and keep them healthy and happy, you won't need to hire new substitutes," she said.

She added that, within the ABA program — known as RISe — at Ridge, the student-teacher ratio is 2:1 and sometimes 3:1, when the program was designed for teachers to work one-on-one with students.

"Each classroom is understaffed," she said. "If one classroom needs extra support, aides will be assigned to help out the other classes."

During the meeting, Superintendent Leonard Fitts applauded her efforts, stating that the HR Director is "working extremely hard" to fill vacancies at all school levels.