Rockland County, NY – The season of Peace on Earth isn’t getting off to the most peaceful of starts in a Rockland County community where the melting pot seems to have achieved meltdown.
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It looked like the level of unease might have peaked last month near the end of a long school board meeting going on well past midnight when the deputy school superintendent, Joe Farmer, lectured the East Ramapo school board as follows:
“This has not much to do with the selection of a lawyer or firing lawyers,” he said of a board decision to hire a new law firm at four times the rates of its current lawyers. “It has to do with the demise of a school district as we know it.” He concluded, “This is a declaration of war.”
As it turned out, that meeting was rather tame compared with the one last Wednesday when more than 500 people turned out to orate, jeer, shout “Shame!” and more often than not, berate the board.
“We went from an arena of disagreement to an arena of lunacy,” said Nathan Rothschild, the school board president.
And so it goes in a community where it seems almost everything boils down to a divide between Orthodox Jews, on the one side, and much of the rest of the community, on the other.
Ground zero for now is the schools, where roughly 70 percent of the students are black and Hispanic, and where Hasidic and other Orthodox Jews, who almost always send their children to private yeshivas, control six of the nine seats on the school board.
What is commonly called the “private school community,” centered in enclaves of traditional Jewish life like Monsey and New Square, tends to chafe at high taxes and complain that schools are wasteful. Their leader on the board, Aron Wieder, said the discord is the result of “trumped up rumors and innuendos” about the board’s plans to cut positions. In remarks sometimes met with jeers Wednesday, he tried and failed to find a conciliatory message.
“Change we can believe in comes with bold and daring actions, which at times can be highly controversial,” he said. “At this pivotal time, I would like to reach out to each and every person of this district.”
Alas, for many other residents, the perception is that the board cares about keeping down taxes, acquiring power and finding ways to extend public services to private school students much more than it cares about the education of students.
“I feel it’s incumbent on every school board member to care about the education of the kids – that’s why we’re there,” said Mimi Calhoun, who first came on the school board when the Orthodox members took control six years ago. “We don’t talk about it. We talk about money, about bids, budgets, contracts. We don’t talk about education. It’s shocking, and it’s becoming demoralizing for the district.”
WHAT set things off was a vote to hire a Long Island lawyer, Albert D’Agostino. His main appeal to the board was that he represents the Lawrence School District on Long Island, which also is controlled by Orthodox Jews, and has been enterprising in finding lawful ways to provide special education services at shared expense to private school students. It is a complicated issue involving cost, services and guidelines about providing services in the least restrictive environment that the board majority says can be handled more effectively and less expensively in Ramapo.
It might have been a tough sell even if Mr. D’Agostino’s fees and expenses were not four times what the current lawyers get paid when the board is desperately pruning costs everywhere else and if he had not been part of an investigation by the state attorney general’s office questioning the legality of public pensions being awarded to him and other lawyers.
Mr. Wieder and Mr. Rothschild, who is not Hasidic and tends to be a moderator between the two sides, say it is inaccurate and unfair to insinuate that the board cares about issues other than education. They point out that the board has expanded full-day kindergarten and opened a new early education center. They say that a well-run district means more resources, not less, for education. Still, it’s painful to watch, whether it’s Mr. Wieder referring to improving “the services we are required to provide for the unfortunate special-needs children” or much of the audience hooting when he concluded with “God bless America.”
You can say it’s a lot more benign than other culture clashes around the world, and it probably is. But at the very least, you could draw the conclusion that if you want to make decisions for children and communities with which you have little in common, you better listen well, reach out far and do everything in as transparent a way as possible. Few people seem to think that’s the way things have worked in East Ramapo.
Another slander article by the New York Slimes based on their warped agenda. There is not mention of the fact that the majority of the taxpayers are Orthodox and therefore deserve to control the seats. Taxation without representation is tyranny.
Its not nice that the people who use public schools which we pay for shall lecture us about education, Remember average taxpayer pays about 8,000.00 + a year and gets almost nothing in return its high time to turn this thing around
Nobody’s complaining about the majority. The problem is that they are not acting in the interests of the public, and they are acting in a ridiculously authoritarian and secretive manner.
if anyone would look into everything going on in east ramapo/rockland they would realize there is so much money wasted and i think it is time to put a stop to this. the lawyer has been hired for 33 years and done nothing yes it is time for a change. and the majority of the people are orthodox is east ramapo or else the jewish members would not have won.
exactly why yidden shouldn’t be in government. It may be true or false but the controversy is not worth it.
the current lawer charges 7 hours a day amounting to 225`000 a year i dont think the new one will addup to that much
It’s a shame that the posters here didn’t get a public school education, their reading comp and civics skills would be higher than a fourth grader’s as evidenced by these posts.
The issue with Weider and his cronies is the underhanded way they have done the board’s business. There may be legitimate reasons to change attorney’s. But instead of voicing those reasons, Weider handled things in an underhanded, sleezy way that made him look like a shylock. He also has a fifth grade chassidishe edumucation but that doesn’t mean you hide things from your other board members and the public and then weasel through a vote. Even Rothschild, no rocket scientist for sure but another frum guy, asked him not to address the issue while Rothschild was away. Weider didn’t listen.
Weider has one agenda for himself and his shyster cronies, and it has nothing to do with education. It has to do with getting as much of that 290 million into his and the chevra’s pockets. And when the feds bust him, you’ll all cry about a yid who did nothing wrong. Rest assured Weider and his posse have set back race relations in East Ramapo 50 years, but you shepselech defend him because thats what you are.
By the way the majority of people on East Ramapo are not orthodox. There are 49,000 registered voters and only about 12000 vote with the frumme making up about 8000. So we better watch out because I bet alot more of them will turn out to vote next time around.
These are the most entertaining comments! Even moreso than The Journal News. Shaul in Monsey, hilarious!
And now in all seriousness, being an East Ramapo alumnus, I’m thoroughly disgusted with what’s going on. I’m glad the NY Times article this is pulling from wasn’t really polarized. It clearly demonstrates this mess, for lack of a better word.
As a East Ramapo resident and a parent of both yeshiva and public school children I was disgusted by the actions of Wieder and the rest of the “frum” people on the board. Anyone who is interested can find video of the meeting where Wieder tried to pass this under the cover of darkness. Go to youtube and search for east ramapo. These so called “frum” board members (regardless of the tiger woods behaviors on the side) are being mechalel shem hashem on a grand scale.
These postings do not address the crucial issue: Are the public school children of East Ramapo getting short shrift because of religious issues?? Each family desires that his/her children obtain a good education that prepares them for higher education. The board’s definition of what is a good education may be different than the public school’s parents/students.Quality public education must be preserved so ALL residents can obtain what is valuable to them.
isn’t it possible to split the district that monsey and new square shouldn’t be with us and that way we will be able to vote ourselves whats good for us?