Power of Ten Update
Special Edition: Someone Else’s Kids
“They want me to care about someone else’s kids, they obviously don’t care about my kids.”
This is how East Ramapo school board member Grossman characterized his constituents attitude towards public education.
How could anyone come to such a serious misunderstanding of our fundamental community obligations?
In fact, this is nothing new, the school district and the NY State Education Department (NYSED) have a long history of encouraging, or at least tolerating, this transactional relationship. The process of dismantling our school district has been accomplished by a series of deals similar to the one implied by Mr. Grossman.
In fact, the original deal was that the school district would ignore the lack of education in many yeshivas in return for not voting down the school budget. In this way, all the great achievements of the East Ramapo school district in its heyday were built on the backs of poor Jewish children who were cheated out of the education they were constitutionally entitled to.
The result of not caring about someone else’s children is that all children suffer.
NYSED must cease treating the school board as a trading partner. The legal and constitutional responsibility for every child’s education rests with the state. All of the duties and responsibilities of the school district are delegated to it by the state. Whether or not Mr. Grossman or his constituents care about “someone else’s children” should be irrelevant. They should not be allowed to hold children’s education hostage. It is as if a babysitter refused to feed the children to extort a higher rate from the parents. The only reasonable response is: “you’re fired!”
What You Can Do:
Please attend the next school board meeting:
Tuesday, April 26 at 7:30
105 South Madison Ave, Spring Valley
Please come early so you can sign up to speak. Please denounce Mr. Grossman’s offensive remarks and hold NYSED responsible for it’s failure to protect every child’s constitutional right to a sound basic education.
Please FILL THIS FORM, calling on NYSED to enact regulations that hold nonpublic schools accountable for providing a basic secular education.