More District 15 Drama
Krum points out in my comments to this post that the Lawrence Public Schools sent out a mailing, paid for with tax dollars, which basically encourages only public school parents to get out and vote. The relevant section from the mailing:
I don't want my tax dollars to go towards encouraging only select members of the community to vote. The school district should be representing the whole community. Until the non-public school community feels that their interests are being equally represented, I doubt that they will be inclined in any large numbers to approve a budget controlled by a school board that continues to spend district residents' hard-earned tax dollars on excluding them.
Here is an unsettling statistic. A Nassau County BOCES report reveals that in recent voting a mere 20% of public school parents turned out for elections directly impacting their children's education.Perhaps in another community, without the tensions that exist between public and private school demographics, this would be considered an innocuous statement. But in my mind, this is nothing short of encouraging public school parents - and only public school parents - to get out and vote and put up a good fight against the insidious forces of the private school community. I truly resent my (exorbitant) taxes being used to encourage only one segment of the community to exercise their freedom of democracy.
I don't want my tax dollars to go towards encouraging only select members of the community to vote. The school district should be representing the whole community. Until the non-public school community feels that their interests are being equally represented, I doubt that they will be inclined in any large numbers to approve a budget controlled by a school board that continues to spend district residents' hard-earned tax dollars on excluding them.
posted by orthomom at 9:57 AM
11 Comments:
blah, blah, blah. you're becoming boring. it's the same thing over and over. (Before you bite my head off, I'll do it for you. "Then don't read my blog.")
The funny part is, I've been getting my most hits ever since I started posting regularly about this - and many e-mail referrals on these posts specifically. (This is a story I have been covering since I started blogging - check my archives from around this time last year). I guess there actually are people that are genuinely interested in a story that merges public education vs. private education issues with good old low-down dirty local political squabbling. Especially when the non-public school community is mostly Orthodox. I am ORTHOmom, after all. Go figure.
This is a story that interests me greatly - which is generally why I started a blog. To post about topics that I find interesting. You want balanced representation of all the news stories out there? That's not what blogs are all about. Try subscribing to the NY Times or The Wall Street Journal for that.
Anyway, if this topic annoys you so much, it's not like there aren't two non-district 15 posts right below this.
A number of years ago, I sat on a committee to do some sort of strategic planning with the schools. We thought having a community liason working at SD 15 would help listen to and integrate more services with our local private schools and our public schools. The finished report even called for this new staff position. Well here we are 6 years later and we still don't have a community liason.
Funny how the board wants to hear the community's input, spent all that money to get our ideas, and then chose to ignore those very ideas. Guess you know why so many people won't support you now.
Orthomom, youre a perfect example of why jews are so hated around the world. This blog sounds like its being authored by kyles mom. An upper class (or mid upper class) jewish woman from long island with too much time on her hands who sends her kids to private schools being nosey and meddling in the affairs of others in order to save some money or simply because SHE knows whats just and fair.
Im not even saying youre wrong. I just wanted to give you the newsflash that regardless of costs, school performance etc. school taxes are not going down, and all your strerotypcial-jewish-long-island-mother self important whining isn’t going to change this.
Whats that you say? Blame Canada?
But they sent the mailing to Krum, who I presume isn't a public school parent. Why would they do that, and why would they include a statement sure to antagonize private-school parents, if their objective was solely to motivate public school parents to vote? Maybe it was just a standard piece of "get out the vote" literature and the only statistic they could dig up was the one from the Nassau BOCES report, which I presume was county-wide and not necessarily specific to District 15? You and Krum may be predisposed to view the mailing overly harshly.
Moishy, it was a district wide mailing. I'm not sure the mailing was an insidious plot to get a particular segment out to vote, but it does reflect the the fact that the mentality of the board is that the true stakeholders here are the public school parents only. I don't buy the argument that other statistics aren't available. Why not just cite overall turnout statistics, which I am sure available for the district specifically rather than county-wide?
You and Krum may be predisposed to view the mailing overly harshly.
Well, yes. As I said in my post, in any other district, perhaps the statement wouldn't be as inflammatory. In a district with issues as large as the rifts here, there isn't any such thing as throwaway comments.
"Funny how the board wants to hear the community's input, spent all that money to get our ideas, and then chose to ignore those very ideas"
So SD 15 is acting the same way as the 5T's mosdot
"Orthomom, youre a perfect example of why jews are so hated around the world. This blog sounds like its being authored by kyles mom. An upper class (or mid upper class) jewish woman from long island with too much time on her hands who sends her kids to private schools being nosey and meddling in the affairs of others in order to save some money or simply because SHE knows whats just and fair.
Im not even saying youre wrong. I just wanted to give you the newsflash that regardless of costs, school performance etc. school taxes are not going down, and all your strerotypcial-jewish-long-island-mother self important whining isn’t going to change this.
Whats that you say? Blame Canada? "
To quote Achad Haam "Aliyat hadam tochicach" Just like blood liberls were blamed on Jews when we know they are false so I don't believe it is the likes of Orthomom are the reason why we are hated around the world.
Orthomom-who to the best of my knowledge I have never met-at least writes on her blogs many sensitive things.
Having said that I firmly maintain that the Orthodox community should not engage in anti-school board activities as a community-announcements in schul, speeches by a SD 15 school Board member in schul etc. I need not get into the theory whether Ortho Jews should have a right as a group to get involved in issues of education where they don't partake of-I could argue both ways and in theory probably in a close call believe we could. But in a pragmatic situation it should not be done certainly mipnei darkei shalom. No objections to people voting their pocket book-but don't be the scapegoat to be hated by many outside of SD 15 too.
I have very mixed feelings about this election. The ones who will gain the most will be the wealthiest families in back lawrence who pay huge taxes. The average taxpayer will gain very little, unless the new school board totally rips apart the school system which will cause major problems in the future. If the "new" school board is fair, then the amount saved will not cover the yearly tuition increases from Yeshivas. If you want to look at where alot of money is wasted from the entire community. Look at the continuous increases in home values, that many homeowners hire lawyers to fight. Lawyers charge 50% of first years savings, and since the values seem to be raised every year, they basically take 50% of the total savings from many homeowners. I have not heard this mentioned, although I cant say I pay much attention to the situation. Of course the salaries have to be contained, and schools consolidated. But I dont have a good feeling about the future school board. And I dont think that the middle class families financial problems will be solved by taking over the school board
The private school parents needs to stay off the Public School board. ALL of them shoud resigned and let the public take over. When we were the majority on the board the ORTODOX JEWS complained about everything that was being done to better the kids. Since they came on they have closed 2 schools and don't have the interest of our kids at heart like they promised. All their thinking about is how to get rid of everyone who's not ORTODOX JEWS out of the community. We're disgusted by this because we welcome the ORTODOX JEWS into our community and all they want is to get rid of us. THIS IS RACISM AR ITS WORST. We're not leaving. Get used to it because we refuse to let anyone run us our of our homes.
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