Day in Albany Over East Ramapo Schools Monitor Bill

County Executive Ed Day lobbied in Albany yesterday in support of the proposal to bring a state monitor into the troubled East Ramapo school district.

He also was interviewed on Capital Tonight. According to the political news show, “Day—who was elected without support from the local Orthodox community—insists this is the only way to right the injustices he believes are being perpetrated on public school students by the board. He came into the studio to discuss.”

Day has been calling for intervention from Albany since state-appointed fiscal monitor Hank Greenberg told the New York Education Department in November that he believed some form of state intervention was needed to repair school system and reverse bad decisions by the East Ramapo Board of Education.

“The district’s finances teeter on the edge of disaster,” he wrote in his report, East Ramapo: A School District in Crisis.

What form the state intervention will take is still under discussion.

Some of the issues Greenberg identified include:

• 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 district is classified as low-resource, high-need by the state—many of its private-school children are classified special-need and 78 percent of its public-school students are poor enough to qualify for the free or reduced-price lunch program.
• Its student body lags well behind the county average for academic performance.
• The district spends more on special education, transportation and administration than the state average, he said. It has the highest rate of budget-rejection by voters, too.
• Most of the board members are representatives of the private school community.
• Cuts made to school spending have disproportionately affected the public school children over the private school children.
• There is little understanding and no trust between the ethnic groups in the district.

Greenberg recommended the state reform the district’s governance structure, give it more money, and require the trustees take remedial training to improve compliance with Open Meeting laws and their ability to deal with a multi-cultural environment.

While the board and its supporters are lobbying against any kind of monitor, other Rockland officials, including Day, have been calling for one since Greenberg’s report came out.