NY Education Commissioner Hikes School Taxes In East Ramapo

EAST RAMAPO, NY — Two weeks after the New York Civil Liberties Union filed an appeal with the New York State Education Department demanding immediate state intervention in East Ramapo, NYSED Commissioner Betty Rosa issued an interim order directing the district to raise taxes by another 4.38 percent over the 1 percent increase voters had approved.

The money, which can only be used for public school students, is needed to adequately address the needs of East Ramapo public school students, NYCLU officials said.

“This historic decision will transform the lives of East Ramapo public school students, who have been denied a sound, basic education for decades,” said Stefanie Coyle, Deputy Director of the Education Policy Center at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “The School Board and local voting majority have systematically defunded public education for years — leaving students without clean drinking water, adequate building facilities, and essential classroom resources. By exercising her power to protect public school students, Commissioner Rosa is heeding the call of parents and advocates across the district: It’s time to put an end to 21st century Jim Crow education in Rockland County.”

As noted in the NYCLU’s appeal filed on behalf of an East Ramapo public school parent, ERCSD public schools’ ventilation systems and drinking fountains fail to meet state standards and the district is in violation of the state's fiscal and academic mandates.

“East Ramapo’s Board of Education continues to ignore the needs of the district’s children and families. The district consistently fails to meet its most basic and necessary fiscal and operational tasks – like developing and implementing a balanced budget, transporting students, and maintaining an educational environment that is safe and welcoming for all students and staff," Rosa said last week when appointing Shawn Farr to serve as Fiscal Monitor, working with Dr. Shelley Jallow, the district’s academic monitor

A full decision on the NYCLU's appeal is still pending, The Journal News reported; meanwhile, the commissioner's move must go to the East Ramapo Board of Education.

The school trustees already rejected a proposal by the district's administration this spring to hike the tax levy by 5.38 percent for 2024-45. Their much lower plan, 1.99 percent, was rejected by voters in May. Voters did OK a 1 percent increase in June — which, as The Journal News pointed out, was the district's first tax increase in about a decade.

The type of measure the commissioner employed hasn’t been used by the state in 100 years, NYCLU officials said, citing New York Education Law 311, which gives the commissioner authority to direct the levying of taxes, or issue any other order to give effect to her appeal decisions.

There's a reason for that, said local politicians.

"The status quo doesn't work for the district but neither will State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa's unilateral and legally questionable action," said former state Sen. Elijah Reichlin-Melnick, who is running to regain the 38th District seat from Sen. Bill Weber, in an op-ed piece in Rockland Daily.

Reichlin-Melnick blamed Weber for failing to protect local taxpayers.

In his own op-ed, Weber blamed Democrats for putting a fiscal monitor in the district in the first place.

"Albany democrats opened up this whole Pandora's box in 2021 by leading the charge on a fiscal monitor with veto powers," Weber said in the Rockland Daily.

There have been numerous state and federal investigations and reports documenting a continuing pattern of fiscal mismanagement and neglect by the East Ramapo Board of Education over more than a decade.

East Ramapo has about 9,000 public school students, mostly Black, Hispanic and Asian; and about 30,000 children living in the district who go to private religious schools.

Since 2005, the board, which is controlled by Orthodox Jewish men, cut 445 public school jobs, reduced kindergarten to a half-day and eliminated many extracurricular programs from the public schools, according to an Education Department report. The board increased spending on out-of-district special-education classes and busing to private religious schools while also spending the district’s resources to aggressively fight lawsuits.

The district's own insurance company refused to pay its legal fees in the first lawsuit brought by parents after the trustees sold or rented district facilities to yeshivas at below-market rates; paid for religious textbooks for yeshiva students; and provided preferential special-education services for yeshiva students. The insurance company said its contract with the district had an exclusion for fraudulent, dishonest, malicious, criminal and intentional acts.

In another suit on voting rights brought by parents, the judge rejected the district's claim of hardship over a $4.3 million payout to lawyers representing the NAACP, lohud.com reported. District officials said they would have to lay off teachers; U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith McCarthy pointed out that the district was paying its lawyers as much as $650 an hour.

In addition to not raising taxes though the public school student population has grown and the district's buildings have deteriorated, district officials made other questionable financial decisions which led to the fiscal monitor. In 2020, for example, the district not only overspent the legal budget by millions of dollars, but also failed to correct to account for a cut in state funding announced at the height of the pandemic, TJN reported. State officials had said they were cutting an amount equal to federal COVID relief funds, but most of the federal funds for East Ramapo were earmarked for its local private schools. The district became insolvent and needed to borrow funds to meet payroll.

READ MORE:

• Lead In East Ramapo School Water Echoes Racism In Flint
• NYCLU Appeals to State over East Ramapo School Trustee 'Oversight'
• Parents v East Ramapo School Board: Another Suit
• Feds Rip East Ramapo Over Yiddish Bilingual Special-Ed
• Another Call for a Monitor with Power in East Ramapo
• Arrest Warrant For Rockland Rabbi In Contempt Of Court
• East Ramapo's Legal Fees Excessive, Court Rules