East Ramapo Parents Sue to Compel State to Act

Parents of children in East Ramapo schools who are fed up with state officials filed a petition in State Supreme Court in Albany Jan. 14, asking the court to direct the state to take concrete remedial action to safeguard their children’s right to a sound basic education as guaranteed by the New York State Constitution.

“East Ramapo Parents are sick and tired of getting the runaround from NY State Education Dept,” wrote Steve White in his Power of Ten e-letter.

The district, which includes parts of the communities of New City, Pearl River, Nanuet, Spring Valley, Suffern, New Hempstead, Chestnut Ridge, Monsey and Wesley Hills, has 9,000 students in its schools. However, another 24,000 school-age children live there, and go to private schools—mostly yeshivas.

The parents in this suit are represented pro bono by the Education Law Center.

The suit targets the Board of Regents, which oversees all public and private education in New York, and the State Education Department.

The petition describes numerous state and federal investigations and reports documenting a continuing pattern of fiscal mismanagement and neglect by the East Ramapo Board of Education over the last decade. The reports include two in the last year by state-appointed monitors -- each of whom has concluded with a call for state intervention.

Each day the district fails to act to fix the problems, each day the state fails to intervene, “... is a precious day of learning lost by our kids,” said parent-petitioner Romel Alvarez on the Education Law Center website.

State intervention was up before the state legislature last year, but the Republican leadership of the state Senate said -- and repeated this fall -- that they would block any such bill. The GOP is closely aligned with Orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley, who have made private school funding a priority.

Parents are in court on several fronts, including a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in August and a longer-standing suit covering many of the parents’ first allegations against the district, including accusations that the trustees sold or rented district facilities to yeshivas at below-market rates; paid for religious textbooks for yeshiva students; and provided preferential special-education services for yeshiva students.

This new suit details the affects of the administration’s actions on teaching and learning in the district, including failures to provide essential programs and services to vulnerable student populations such as English Language Learners and students with disabilities, cuts made in the number of classroom teachers and support staff employed by the district, and elimination of essential school programs.

RELATED:

• Feds Rip East Ramapo Over Bilingual Special-Ed
• Parents Threaten to Sue State over East Ramapo if Corrections Aren’t Immediate
• Another Call for a Monitor with Power in East Ramapo
• Parents v East Ramapo School Board: Another Suit
• East Ramapo’s Legal Fees Excessive, Court Rules