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| Re: Democrats flip out, go full-retard, and try instituting Third Reich policies in New Jersey (1455647) | |||
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Re: Democrats flip out, go full-retard, and try instituting Third Reich policies in New Jersey |
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Posted by Mitch45 on Mon Aug 14 15:24:04 2017, in response to Re: Democrats flip out, go full-retard, and try instituting Third Reich policies in New Jersey, posted by mtk52983 on Mon Aug 14 14:22:45 2017. "According to friends of mine in the Five Towns that send their children to public schools, the quality of public schools has decreased dramatically because the school board, a majority of whom send their children to Yeshivas and not the public schools, have drastically cut services that are provided in public schools in order to allow for increased support for children going to private schools."That is a BLATANT LIE that has been disproven many times. Your friends are obviously a bunch of bigots. Here is the truth. The demographics of the 5 Towns have changed dramatically since the 1980's. Orthodox families have moved in and Gentile families and non-Orthodox families have moved out. Nothing new here, demographics change everywhere over time. Case in point, the South Bronx. As more Orthodox families moved in, there was a gradual shift in the school-age student population from the public schools to the private schools. Again, to be expected. Here is the rub - the School Board of District 15 in Nassau County, which governs part of the 5 Towns, continued to submit the same or higher school budgets year after year to the state, with corresponding raises in school taxes, despite the fact that the public school student population was shrinking pretty quickly. The School Board openly admitted that the student population was shrinking but they maintained that the needed to keep the budget high so that teachers would not have to be laid off, even though these teachers had very few students to teach. There was a story about one school having three music teachers for 10 students. The Orthodox families of the 5 Towns face a double-edged sword - not only do they have to pay for private schools, which can total tens of thousands of dollars per year, but they also have to pay the school taxes that support the public schools. Orthodox families know this going in and by and large, accept it - the families are good citizens and want public school children to have a place to be educated. But as the 1990's became the 2000's, more and more information became public to show that the District 15 School Board was wasting money - submitting exorbitant budgets to keep teachers employed (a noble idea, admittedly) despite the public schools being more than half-empty. But what burned them even more was the School Board's refusal to provide free services for special ed students in the private schools whereas special ed students in the public schools did get free services. So the Orthodox families began to complain to the School Board, but were ignored. So, Orthodox members of the 5T began to run for School Board positions. Those elections are held every year. The Orthodox people had to run for those positions because the School Board was collecting their tax money without any concern for the rights of the people paying them - taxation without representation, in other words. The first few elections were contentious indeed - Orthodox parents ran against public school parents. Since by that time the 5T had a majority of Orthodox parents, the Orthodox parents won seats on the School Board. Immediately, there were lawsuits filed by the public school parents - these suits claimed that the Orthodox parents had no right to sit on the School Board because they had no children in the system and therefore could not govern the system properly. Each and every lawsuit was thrown out almost immediately as being in violation of civil rights laws, i.e., that you could not bar a person from holding public office based on religious beliefs. The Courts also held point blank that if the School Board was going to tax the private school parents, then the private school parents had the right to see how that money was spent, including sitting on the School Board itself. After those cases were thrown out, the public school parents gave in and since the early 2000's, District 15 has had a majority of private school parents on the School Board. Now, then. About school closures. At one time, there were six public schools (Schools #1 through #6), one middle school in Lawrence (Lawrence Middle School) and one high school (Lawrence High School) in District 15. Because of changing demographics, some of these schools, which are huge structures, were at least half empty. The families who sent students to those schools had simply moved away. In the 1990's, the School Board closed the #4 school and sold it to a yeshiva - and it was the public school parent School Board who did that. In the early 2000's, the #1 school was combined with the #2 school and the #1 school property was sold to a developer, who paid the School Board millions for it. In later years, with still declining numbers, the #5 school was combined with Lawrence Middle School (which building is astoundingly large) and the building was leased to a yeshiva. In about 2007 the #6 school was closed and its student body combined with the #3 school and its premises were sold to a yeshiva. That is where we stand today - District 15 schools now consist of the #2 school and the #3 school in their own premises, the #5 school in the Lawrence Middle School building, and Lawrence High School. Now, the question is - did the Orthodox School Board close these schools to benefit the yeshivas, or did they close them because declining demographics gave rise to a new fiscal policy which required the closure of underused schools? As an Orthodox parent, my answer is the latter. I can tell you first hand that the closure of the public schools and the opening of yeshivas in their place has not helped me ONE BIT. The tuition for my four children (three in elementary school and one in high school) for the 2017-2018 is SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. That is a $70 followed by three zeroes (or five, if you count cents). There is a widespread tuition crisis in the 5 Towns - people can't afford to send their children to the yeshivas anymore. The cost has become prohibitive, to be charitable. Some people have espoused doing away with the yeshiva system and returning to the cheder system of the 1930's - have the children go to public school in the morning and to an abbreviated Hebrew school in the afternoons. Tuition is killing many of the 5T parents, me included. Now, I agree that I have no right to bitch and moan because I choose to send my children to private school. But that isn't the point - the point is that the closure of the empty public school buildings has not helped us financially ONE LITTLE BIT. In fact, my kids' tuition goes up EVERY YEAR despite the closure of public school facilities. Other parents experience this too. Where is the benefit that I'm supposed to be getting from the closures? It doesn't exist! That is my point. What the Orthodox School Board has done is streamline the public school budget to keep school taxes down at a reasonable level. For my house in the 5T, which sits on a 4800 square foot plot of land, house included, I pay about $6500 per year in total taxes. The same plot of land in District 14 would have taxes over $10,000. And holding the line on taxes doesn't just benefit the Orthodox families, it benefits every single taxpayer in the 5T, either Orthodox or not. I agree that the quality of education in District 15 is not what it was 40 years ago, and that is sad. But I don't believe that the Orthodox School Board is completely to blame. Declining test scores and graduation rates are also the fault of disintegrating families and children raised in a "me first" society, where they don't care about education. So either your friends are ignorant or they're bigots. |
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