[Morris] Kohn, the former board president, said that Orthodox board
candidates are approved and influenced by the region’s top rabbis, who
used to appoint liaisons to individual board members. During his term,
Kohn said, the rabbis discussed how many seats they should seek on the
board and whether they should allow a public-school board president “as a
gesture.” He said the rabbinic leaders, described as a “board of
rabbis,” sometimes decide how the community should vote on budgets,
sometimes not. “The (school) board listens to or adheres to the
advice of the board of rabbis,” Kohn said. “When it comes to larger
issues, the school board seeks their advice and opinions.”
The Journal News has a long front page report on the haredi-controlled public school board in East Ramapo, New York. The board's president is one of our favorite sleazy attorneys, Daniel Schwartz.
The board has been accused of several kinds of wrongdoing, from sweetheart deals crafted with yeshivas to sell the yeshivas school board property at well below market value, to paying for religious schools' religious texts, to other types of financial misbehavior.
How these haredi school board members get elected and how they behave at school board meetings is indicative of the contempt with which they hold the democratic process:
…New Hasidic or Orthodox members of the school board generally arrive as strangers to the public-school community. Most don’t campaign outside Orthodox neighborhoods or provide biographical information to parent groups or the secular media. When they take their seats in the board room, they tend to say little.…
How these board members are chosen — and who influences them — have been subjects of intense speculation, even obsession, for many in the district.
…[Morris] Kohn, the former board president, said that Orthodox board candidates are approved and influenced by the region’s top rabbis, who used to appoint liaisons to individual board members. During his term, Kohn said, the rabbis discussed how many seats they should seek on the board and whether they should allow a public-school board president “as a gesture.” He said the rabbinic leaders, described as a “board of rabbis,” sometimes decide how the community should vote on budgets, sometimes not.
“The (school) board listens to or adheres to the advice of the board of rabbis,” Kohn said. “When it comes to larger issues, the school board seeks their advice and opinions.”…
In the old days before haredi Judaism was dominant in places like East Ramapo, we used to call behavior like that of Daniel Schwartz and his haredi colleagues a chillul Hashem, a desecration of God's name.
It still is a chillul Hashem, of course. But now it has rabbinic endorsement.
And that thuggishness and bullying is common throughout haredi society there.
“We are the majority here,” said Isaac Gold, 28, of Monsey, a father of three who works in accounting. “We pay taxes, don’t get our fair share and hear anti-Semitic comments. When we got on the board, our board members cut back, and tax increases became lower. We have to live together, but there can’t be denial. This is the new reality.”
The new reality is that when haredim took power they acted unethically and with unprecedented ruthlessness and thuggishness.
And that won't stop, I think, until Schwartz and some of his buddies – and the haredi rabbis who control them – are serving prison sentences and facing large civil suits.
As for the claim that haredim don't get their fair share of school services paid through their property taxes, we know about homes illegally registered as synagogues and as parsonages and other tax dodges common in Monsey and its environs.
Most haredim do not do this, of course, but some clearly do, and the money they are illegally not paying in taxes is money the schools don't have to pay teachers and buy supplies.
The public schools also fund special education for yeshiva students and transportation, along with lending the yeshiva textbooks and buying them textbooks for secular subjects.
But none of that really matters.
The public schools are supposed to there, free and open to all, so every child in a district, regardless or religion or country of birth, can get an education.
We long ago accepted this as a public good.
Childless non-Jewish couples and gay and lesbian couples also pay property taxes that support schools most will never send children to. So do elderly people and single people.
The schools are a public good just as the roads are and the police are and the fire department is and the library is – even if you don't like to read, never have a fire, hate police and don't drive.
But for haredim, most of whom never took a civics class, this is all foreign.
And that, too, will not change unless New York State forces haredi schools to teach basic secular courses like civics, math, science and American history.
As it now stands, many haredi boys leave high school with the equivalent of a third grade secular education.
And perhaps that, more than anything else, explains the behavior of East Ramapo haredim toward the district's public schools.