"The fact that they're selling [Hillcrest School] to the same people, that they sold it in an emergency meeting and the fact that enrollment is increasing — I think that these three facts alone should require that [the sale] be annulled."
Betty Carmand and Steven White have filed a petition with the New York State Deaprtment of Education to void the sale of Hillcrest Elementry School in the scandal-plagued haredi-controlled East Ramapo School District to a New Square-based Skvere private hasidic girls school, Avi Yaakov.
New Square is running out of space and buying Hillcrest at well below market rate saves Skvere a tremendous amount of money – which is allegedly why the scandal-plagued haredi-controlled school board sold the school to Avir Yaakov, even though the sale appears to hurt the public school students the board is supposed to represent.
Today's Journal News reports:
…[White and Carmand] argue that the board could have gotten a better offer [for the school] but failed to use an accurate appraisal of the property and didn't consider comparable properties nearby that sold for millions more.…
White and Carmand also say the school board closed Hillcrest in 2010 and sold it twice (the first sale was annulled by the commissioner) based on "the false assumption" that public school enrollment would decline, leaving the building as surplus. Enrollment has actually grown by nearly 1,000 students since the last demographic study in 2009…
"The fact that they're selling (Hillcrest) to the same people [and at the same below market rate price], that they sold it in an emergency meeting and the fact that [school district] enrollment is increasing [not decreasing, as the board claimed as rationale for selling the school]— I think that these three facts alone should require that [the sale] be annulled," Carmand said.
Furthermore, they claim, the buyers exercised an illegitimate "right of first refusal" when they bid $4.9 million on the property following an earlier bid that was $50,000 lower from a mysterious corporation called Excellence in Education.
The petitioners claim that Excellence in Education's "alleged" bid of $4.85 million was "a sham designed to trigger" Hasidic Congregation Avir Yakov's right of first refusal on the sale of the property, a guarantee provided in its lease agreement with the district. The congregation uses the school as a girls yeshiva.
That lease had already been annulled by the commissioner, which voided the congregation's right of first refusal, the petitioners argue.…
It's the second time the Hillcrest building has been sold to Avir Yakov by the district. The first sale, in 2010, was annulled by the state education commissioner after White challenged it on similar grounds.
An investigation into that sale and other East Ramapo real estate transactions by the state Attorney General's Office resulted in the school board's appraiser pleading guilty to a fraud-related misdemeanor. [He accepted a $5,000 bribe from Skvere hasidim to undervalue the property, was arrested and charged with that felony, and then pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge as part of a sweetheart plea deal. The hasidim who allegedly bribed him were never named or charged.]…
Petitioners charge that the district has shown favoritism to Avir Yakov by not charging late fees for consistent late rent payments. They also note that, unlike other East Ramapo schools, Hillcrest has a new central air conditioning system, a new roof and a location convenient to New Square.…
[The petition] will be decided by [New York State’s] Acting Education Commissioner Beth Berlin, a department spokesman said.
The full petition. Please right click to read in a new browser window or tab, or left click to download:
Carmand-and-White-Hillcrest-sale-petition-to-void 12-19-2014
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