Reply To: Suing The East Ramapo School Board

ZD

The current East Ramapo school budget which was passed by the voters was for $218 million and calls for a tax increase of 1.3%. I don’t understand why you think the community is not voting for tax increases to fund education.

The school monitor will have to convince the Senate, Assembly & Governor that the state MUST TAKEOVER THE DISTRICT because as long as the current board is in charge there will be no shortfalls. All that will be done is that the board will balance the budget by cutting non-mandatory services and tax increases. But once the state takes over they are not going to get the tax increases so either they kick in more money or cut services.

The services the frum use are busing and special ed both mandatory and can’t be cut. Special ed they can fight the private placement of students but it’s expensive and can cost as much as $70,000 per child to win the case. The rationale is that once the district wins the case the parent will give up and leave the student in the public school. But by law the parent can appeal each year and any saving gotten by having the student in public school is lost in legal fees.

Right now the frum community is not suing the district about special ed. but if they remove students from yeshivas putting them in public school they had better make sure that there is zero tolerance for antisemitism. The first time one of the 9,000 public school student or school employee utters an antisemitic comment every parent is going to request private placement.Getting the comment on video isn’t hard. There are going to be hundreds of Jewish special ed students in public school which means there are going to be hundreds of Jewish shadows everyone has a phone with video and having it on all the time isn’t expensive. Enticing public school employees or students to make the antisemitic comment isn’t hard either.Once you have proof the public school is a hostile environment than the yeshiva is the better placement. This will cost the district tens of millions of dollars because all the Jewish special ed students will request and be granted private placement.