Makers of "Jew in Rockland" Video Oppose East Ramapo Monitor

The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council has released a new video on a Rockland County issue—this time on the proposal for a state-appointed monitor for the troubled East Ramapo school district.

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 last video about Rockland published by the OJPAC was “The Jew in Rockland.” It also touched on conflicts between local Hasidic communities and their neighbors, but compared the county to Nazi Germany.

OJPAC has produced a number of videos on YouTube about the school district in the past couple of years.

This one opposes the state intervention recommended by state-appointed fiscal monitor Hank Greenberg, who told the New York Education Department in November 2014 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.

This video opposes a monitor on the grounds that it is “un-American” and proposed by “outsiders.”

In fact the monitor plan is supported by a wide range of county groups and officials including the Rockland Board of Rabbis and the Rockland School Boards Association.

But it faces an uphill fight in Albany. Brooklyn lawmaker Walter Mosley withdrew his support citing ’anti-Semitic overtones.’

PHOTO: OJPAC YouTube Channel

RELATED:

• UPDATE: East Ramapo School Officials React to Fake Tuition Reimbursement Letter
• East Ramapo School Budget Proposal Restores Past Cuts
• Day in Albany Over East Ramapo Schools Monitor Bill
• YouTube Video Compares Rockland County to Nazi Germany
• East Ramapo Monitor Plan Out of Education Committee