Lawrence, NY - At Odds Over Schools

Lawrence, NY - The school district has been changing, house by house, as Orthodox Jewish families have flocked here over the last two decades, gradually at first and then in growing numbers.  While not yet a majority, the Orthodox have nonetheless emerged as the dominant force in a clash of cultures. And the front line in this battle is Lawrence’s once highly regarded public school system.

In each of the last four years, Orthodox voters mobilized to defeat the school budget. Then in July, they took charge of the school board, though few of the Orthodox send their children to public schools. Out of seven seats, the new majority consists of four Orthodox members and one ally. “We have the control here,” one Orthodox resident, David M. Hiller, said recently as he walked along Central Avenue, a retail hub featuring shops like SuperSol (“the ultimate Kosher supermarket”) and Jerusalem Pizza. 

Schools may seem to be a peculiar battlefield in this power struggle, since most Orthodox families here send their children to private Orthodox day schools. But many of this district’s Orthodox residents object to paying school taxes that average about $6,000 per home for a system they do not use. Their leaders also complain that more public money should be channeled to the Orthodox day schools, which by law are limited to tax-financed busing, books and special education services.  

Others who live in the Lawrence school district, however, including many assimilated Jews, voice outrage that people who do not use the system are deciding its fate. They complain that the budget defeats have starved the schools and deprived its students. Since the law allows some increases after budget defeats, spending in Lawrence since the last approved budget in 2002-3 has risen an average of about 3 percent a year. The current total is $92 million.  “We feel invaded,” said an Atlantic Beach delicatessen customer, a self-described non-Orthodox Jew and activist parent who declined to give her name. “We don't mind them being here, but taking over and shutting down the school system is not the right thing.” (Atlantic Beach is part of the Lawrence school district.)  

But one of the new Orthodox board members, Uri Kaufman, a developer, said: “We want to get along. I know nobody believes it, but we really want what’s best for the district.”  

Experts who track expanding Orthodox neighborhoods around the nation say the conflict in Lawrence has far-reaching implications. “Other communities are watching Lawrence very closely, for fear they may be next,” said Prof. William B. Helmreich, the director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College. Orthodox adherents “are cohesive, they marshal forces and vote as a bloc,” he said. “It could happen anywhere.”   

It has already happened in Rockland County, where Orthodox residents control the East Ramapo school board. Similar strains have arisen over the schools and other services in Lakewood, N.J., home to a large Orthodox population.