AU: School Swindle: N.Y. Board Makes Private Education Its Top Priority- The East Ramapo Central School District in New York has failed in its first duty: to provide the best education possible to the children in its care. A New York community provides a frightening example of what can happen when sectarian interests that don’t really care about public education gain control of taxpayer-funded schools that are meant to serve all. The controversy centers on the East Ramapo Central School District in Rockland County. The area is home to a large concentration of Orthodox Jews, and they dominate the local school board. Seven of the boards nine members are Orthodox men. These men don’t send their children to public schools. They enroll them in private yeshivas. Why, then, are they so adamant about running the local public school system? The answer is both shocking and disturbing: They are looting it to divert as much taxpayer money as possible to their private sectarian institutions. The New York Times explains that about 24,000 Orthodox children attend yeshivas. Approximately 9,000 kids, most of them from minority families, are in the public system. And that system is being slowly drained of money. Reported The Times, “Since 2009, the board has cut 245 public school positions, including special education teachers, guidance counselors, all social workers and all elementary assistant principals. Full-day kindergarten has been reduced to half-day, and instrumental music has been eliminated for kindergarten through third grades. Summer school has been eliminated, as has transportation for field trips. Athletics and extracurricular activities have been reduced by 50 percent.” What happened to that money? It appears that much of it was used to help the yeshiva students. The Times reported that even as the public system was being bled dry, “spending on programs that benefit private school students – specifically, transportation and special education – have increased substantially.” Continued The Times, “From 2006-7 to 2013-14, transportation costs increased 48 percent, more than double the statewide increase of 22 percent. Spending on transporting private school students specifically increased nearly 77 percent. From 2010-11 to 2013-14, the cost of providing special education increased 33 percent. Together, transportation and special education now make up 37 percent of the district’s budget, a much higher proportion than is typical statewide.” Angry public school parents demanded that the state intervene. In response, New York officials appointed a special monitor, an attorney named Hank Greenberg, to investigate. Greenberg recently recommended that the state appoint a fiscal monitor with the power to overrule the school board’s spending decisions. He labeled the board’s fiscal oversight “abysmal,” but he stopped short of calling for a state takeover of the district. Greenberg told reporters that he does not believe the East Ramapo board operated “out of base or venal motives.” Rather, he asserted that the board was so intertwined with the Orthodox community that this “has blinded them to the needs of the entire community.” Greenberg is being too generous. This board has failed in its first duty: to provide the best education possible to the children in its care. I’m also not willing to let this board skate on being base and venal. Its goal, it seems, was to siphon as much money as possible away from the public schools and divert it to the yeshivas. Members didn’t seem to much care about what happened to the children left behind in the public system – after all, their kids weren’t in those schools. The board is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. The state should intervene swiftly and take whatever measures are necessary to make certain that the children attending the East Ramapo District’s public schools get the education they’re entitled to. https://au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/school-swindle-ny-board-makes-private-education-its-top-priority
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 01:55:48 +0000
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