By Rabbi David Zwiebel, Executive Vice President, Agudath Israel of America
The New York State Senate and Assembly are currently considering legislation that would impose a State Monitor over the East Ramapo School Board, who would have the power to veto any of the board’s decisions. This is a very bad idea.
Appointing an unelected agent of the state with veto power over the decisions of a democratically elected school board would represent a drastic and unprecedented step. It would significantly dilute the authority of the board and do violence to the principle of democracy upon which school board elections are based. At best, it is an extraordinary remedy justifiable only in the most extraordinary situation, only when all other ameliorative efforts have failed. East Ramapo is not such a situation.
As even the board’s critics have pointed out, the unique demographic profile of the East Ramapo district, where approximately 70% of the district’s school children attend nonpublic schools, has caused it to be woefully underfunded under the current state funding formula. With insufficient state funding, and with firm obligation under state law to provide services to the district’s large and growing nonpublic school population, the board has been forced to make painful funding decisions with respect to non-mandated extracurricular services in the public schools.
If the state legislature wishes to help address East Ramapo’s challenges, the appropriate first step would be to revisit the funding formula as it applies to East Ramapo, to make sure that the state makes school funding allocations that accurately reflect the low socioeconomic standing of the district and its unique demographic profile. That alone will make it more likely that the school board will be able to discharge its legal obligations to all the children in the district and still have sufficient money remaining to fund the East Ramapo public school extra-curricular and school improvement programs that have regrettably been curtailed, due to budgetary shortfalls, in recent years.
Why has an Orthodox Jewish organization like Agudath Israel of America, which I am privileged to serve as executive vice president, decided to enter the public fray over this issue? It is because of the unhappy fact that tensions in the East Ramapo School District have generated considerable ill will and blatant anti-Semitism, particularly directed at the Orthodox Jewish population. It is a dangerous canard to contend, as some of the bill’s proponents do, that Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who do not send their children to East Ramapo’s public schools do not care about the public school population, and cannot be trusted to responsibly discharge their obligations as school board members. Taking the unprecedented step of imposing a monitor on the board feeds directly into this libel, and only intensifies the climate of tension and ill-will currently permeating the district.
And so, respectfully, we urge our state legislators to defeat this proposal, and to take the steps necessary to ensure that the East Ramapo School District is properly funded, so that all the community’s children can receive the education and services they deserve.
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