Labor Day, School Convocation Mark Summer’s End, Students Get Week More

The Fort Lee Public School District gets back to business this week, with convocation scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

An agenda for the two-day opening is posted on the district’s website.

Also on the website, school community members can find a letter released Friday further breaking down the reasons behind ’s drop in report.

The district released the detailed letter several days after Assistant Superintendent Sharon Amato at the Fort Lee Board of Education’s meeting last Monday.

“NJ Monthly Magazine has made significant changes in the analysis, weighting and calibration of data from previous years,” according to the letter. “After careful analysis of the data, it is our belief that changes in the calculation of the data was a major factor in causing us to drop in rank in this report.”

Fort Lee students, school doesn’t start this week however, even though Monday is Labor Day. Fort Lee students instead return to their classrooms next week, on Sept. 10, because the school district has been making full use of the summer months to on infrastructure repair and upgrade projects approved by referendum in January as possible.

That work will likely continue over the next two summers as well.

Also coming up this week, the Fort Lee Mayor and Council meet for an executive session Thursday. The meeting, which takes place in Borough Hall’s second-floor conference room as likely to open to the public at about 8 p.m. For more information and an agenda later in the week, visit the borough’s website.

And finally, Labor Day isn’t the only indication that summer is coming to a close.

The Final installment of the Fort Lee Film Commission’s annual Movies & Music Under the Stars series wraps up Saturday with the Coney Island Sideshow Circus at 7 p.m. at the Fort Lee Community Center and a screening of the film Despicable Me (2010).

Executive director Tom Meyers of the Film Commission described the Coney Island Sideshow Circus as "rare for NJ."

"It's ... an actual live version of what they do in Coney Island on the Boardwalk from Memorial Day to Labor Day," Meyers said.

As , this year was a special one for the Film Commission because it marked the , which traces its roots to Fort Lee, and the Film Commission worked with the cinema giant to celebrate it.

The films for this year’s Saturday evening series were therefore all Universal films, and the studio waved all licensing fees, saving the Film Commission thousands of dollars.

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