State Reps Reject Senate's East Ramapo Monitor Plan

Oversight is the whole point of the East Ramapo school district monitor proposal that faces an uphill battle in the New York state legislature.

A compromise bill was offered by state Sen. David Carlucci to overcome GOP resistance to any oversight of the troubled district—but what the Senate is willing to pass effectively guts the proposal, said two members of the Rockland delegation in Albany.

“We continue to believe that our bill (A.5355) that passed the Assembly is a reasonable and effective way to provide oversight of this district,” Assembly members Ellen Jaffee and Ken Zebrowski said in a prepared statement. “...providing significant authority to the Monitor is essential to an effective bill. Without this crucial language we believe the Senate bill does not provide appropriate oversight and we cannot support it at this time.”

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State intervention in the affairs of East Ramapo was 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.

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.

According to Hamodia, a daily newspaper for the international Orthodox Jewish community, the new leader of the New York state Senate, John Flanagan (R-Suffolk), has “has fought nearly every one of the battles for education equality for yeshivah families over the past few years” and is on record opposing a monitor for East Ramapo.

In addition to Flanagan, opponents include the East Ramapo Board of Education, which is controlled by the private-school community, and the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council.

Jaffee and Zebrowski said they tried to negotiate with counterparts in the Senate but were unsuccessful.

However, we spent most of the day yesterday attempting to negotiate in good faith with the Senate in order to forge a compromise.

Some of our suggestions to the Senate bill, such as the inclusion of an independent appeal process for reviewing board decisions and limiting the time frame for such a review, were included in the amended Senate version of the bill. The appeal process language that we provided was a fair compromise to criticisms that one person would have the ability to override a board decision.

The Senate included this compromise, but unfortunately, stripped the Monitor of the power to respond to anything other than violations of State and Federal law. We believe the Commissioner of Education already has the power to enforce State and Federal law, therefore the Monitor’s powers must expand beyond those basic laws and provide him/her the ability to enforce the strategic academic and fiscal improvement plan.

We continue to have other concerns such as the Comptroller’s role and the Monitor’s time frame, however, providing significant authority to the Monitor is essential to an effective bill. Without this crucial language we believe the Senate bill does not provide appropriate oversight and we cannot support it at this time.