Lawrence, NY - School Board Power Shift
Michael Hatten, an Orthodox Jew who won a seat on the Lawrence school board this week, can't wait to see what happens when the new panel takes office on July 1.
"Let's give this a chance," Hatten said of the school board election results. With the victory of Hatten and Uri Kaufman, the seven-member Lawrence school board will have four Orthodox Jewish members, reflecting the community's growing size and influence in the district. "I'm kind of excited to see what happens."
School board elections have grown more bitterly contested. Private school parents, mostly from the Orthodox Jewish community, have sought a voice on the panel, running on platforms that criticized school spending and performance.
"They've been trying for years to get control and now they have it, so the ball's in their court now," said Jordan Robbins, a vocal and frustrated public school parent who has watched enrollment and school budgets go down for five straight years, and she is a Lawrence High School alumnus who has a son in third grade. "Now that they're running things, it seems to me they have an obligation to get the budget passed."
"Let's give this a chance," Hatten said of the school board election results. With the victory of Hatten and Uri Kaufman, the seven-member Lawrence school board will have four Orthodox Jewish members, reflecting the community's growing size and influence in the district. "I'm kind of excited to see what happens."
School board elections have grown more bitterly contested. Private school parents, mostly from the Orthodox Jewish community, have sought a voice on the panel, running on platforms that criticized school spending and performance.
"They've been trying for years to get control and now they have it, so the ball's in their court now," said Jordan Robbins, a vocal and frustrated public school parent who has watched enrollment and school budgets go down for five straight years, and she is a Lawrence High School alumnus who has a son in third grade. "Now that they're running things, it seems to me they have an obligation to get the budget passed."
posted by VOS IZ NEIAS @ 5/18/2006 10:01:00 AM
3 Comments:
At 12:30 PM,
Anonymous said…
This is a huge opportunity for the frum community. As a five towns resident very actively involved, this has been a victory that took years and years in the making.
For years, private school parents had been paying for extras (e.g. bowling team trip to florida; 1 million dollars worth of worthless calculators, etc..), while the board has stripped everything they could from yeshivahs (pre-k bussing, use of public school fields and of course severley limiting special ed. (For all special ed. requests, 20% of public school children received special ed. compared to 7% for frum people).
Not to mention continuous increase of taxes, while public school enrollment and test scores declined. It was only a matter of time-I hope our candidates live up to their potential
At 8:32 PM,
Anonymous said…
I hope you guys don't make a Chilel H'Sham
At 11:48 PM,
Anonymous said…
Hey you are paying the taxes so suck out every penny you can from the system, or maybe even better bring the frum kids in and make it the into a "Frum Public School"
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