Ramapo Central Name-Change Plan Moves Forward

SUFFERN, NY — The Ramapo Central Board of Education voted last week to move forward with a name change to Suffern Central.

The community is solidly behind the move, which is being sought to differentiate the district from its troubled, controversial, money-strapped, neighbor East Ramapo, where private school students greatly outnumber the public school population and public-school parents, many of color, are fighting the mostly Hasidic school board.

See the District Name Change Survey Results.

Officials are drafting paperwork to file with the Commissioner of Education, who must approve the name change.

Roughly 5,000 children are enrolled in Ramapo Central’s schools: Cherry Lane, Sloatsburg, RP Connor, Montebello and Viola Elementary schools, Suffern Middle School and Suffern High School.

The district includes parts of the communities of Airmont, Hillburn, Montebello, Sloatsburg, Suffern, Tallman, and part of Monsey.

The East Ramapo 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’s finances teeter on the edge of disaster,” the state's first monitor for East Ramapo wrote in his 2014 report, East Ramapo: A School District in Crisis.