Volume 55 Number 43
Produced: Wed Aug 15 5:15:34 EDT 2007
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
"Orthodox don't contribute" (2)
[Bernard Raab, Anonymous]
Tuition, taxes and impact on public schools
[Carl Singer]
We ain't that good
[Bernard Raab]
Yeshiva High School Staffing
[Stuart Feldhamer]
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From: Bernard Raab <beraab@...>
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:16:31 -0400
Subject: "Orthodox don't contribute"
>From: Tzvi Stein:
>So you are telling me that these "subtle and not so subtle" effects
>outweigh the huge amount of money that the Orthodox are paying in taxes
>and not using at all!!! Come on!!
>
>These people are not thinking rationally! Don't they realize the huge
>windfall they're getting? Do they ever think about what the impact
>would be if all the Orthodox would actually use their schools and the
>district had to pay for all those teachers and extra school buildings
>that would be needed!
These problems arise because of the way that susburban communities
typically "become Orthodox". These are usually already-established
communities that have invested in a school system based on the "nomal"
distribution of families and children. Then, over a period of years they
discover that an entire group of residents are withholding their
children from the public schools. Suddenly, it seems, the schools are
overstaffed and underutilized.
Of course, when an entire community is built as an Orthodox community
from the start, such as New Square in Orange County, New York, these
problems do not arise, (although a different set of problems do). New
Square is a community of Satmar chasidim, and I am not aware of a modern
orthodox community that has achieved anything similar, outside of
Israel, that is, although some come close.
Bernie R.
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From: Anonymous
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:16:14
Subject: RE: "Orthodox don't contribute"
> From: Tzvi Stein <Tzvi.Stein@...>
> [snip]
> So you are telling me that these "subtle and not so subtle"
> effects outweigh the huge amount of money that the Orthodox
> are paying in taxes and not using at all!!! Come on!!
>
> These people are not thinking rationally! Don't they realize
> the huge windfall they're getting? Do they ever think about
> what the impact would be if all the Orthodox would actually
> use their schools and the district had to pay for all those
> teachers and extra school buildings that would be needed!
>
> I just can't fathom how they can take all that free money and
> open their mouths with any criticism of the Orthdox. Wow!
>
> How about this idea? Take one of these ungrateful
> communities and get every Orthodox family to register every
> one of their children in public school. Let the conniptions
> and panic play out in the press as they realize that they
> have to double their budget overnight to accommodate all
> these extra students. Then the families can all withdraw the
> registrations on condition that the Orthodox get a little
> appreciation for the support they give, asking nothing in return.
>
> The gall of these people just astounds me.
I live in a fairly densely Orthodox suburb of New York City. I have a
neighbor (not Jewish) who was on the local Board of Ed for over 10
years. She reiterated to me time and time again that they would love to
have Orthodox kids in the schools (though she fully appreciates why that
does not happen and why it will never happen). The problem for our
town, and for at least some other heavily Orthodox communities, is that
the local school districts serve communities with a wide socioeconomic
base, and in general the Orthodox Jews are not moving into the
economically depressed areas. Rather, they are taking a larger and
larger slice out of the middle and upper middle class areas, and so the
entire school demographic can shift literally within a generation and
the entire character of the school can change very quickly.
Based on my conversations with my neighbor, I have come to accept as
probably true that a lot of these school districts would KILL to have a
slug of upper middle class, academically committed and gifted, high
achieving Orthodox students in their schools. And a generation ago,
when (in the Orthodox part of town) half the houses now owned by
Orthodox Jews were owned by less religiously committed Jews or non-Jews
who sent their kids to public school, the demographic in the school was
very different because they had more of those kinds of students. And
even over 10 years I have seen with my own eyes what happens - as the
local schools suffer, the remaining parents who would have sent their
kids to the local public school begin to either send their kids to
private schools, or much more likely, simply move to another local town
with excellent schools. It is a death spiral for these school systems,
for the towns, and frankly for their entire communities that they have
built. I'm not making a judgement here. It is a simple observation.
I'd much rather live in a free market society than a planned one, and so
this is one of the consequences that one must live with.
Another point she has emphasized to me is the disproportionate extent to
which the Orthodox community uses the special needs and early
intervention programs that by Federal law are mandated, though the
reimbursement does not match the cost. I don't think this is a function
of more special needs kids within the community - it is a matter of more
kids and much higher diagnosis rates (that being of course a general
trend and probably another socioeconomic factor in terms of
hypervigilence with regard to developmental milestones). Houses that
once held familes with 1 to 3 children now (often post-renovation) house
familes of 4 to 7 children, so the economic demand placed on the local
school district for providing special needs education and early
intervention for all of these kids is quite meaningful.
I have never crunched the numbers, so I cannot say whether my local
school district would be better off or not if all the Orthodox kids in
our town attended the local school. My guess is that the budget would
be higher, there would be more state aid and higher local taxes, and the
school district would perform significantly better on the sorts of
metrics that one looks at in judging schools (standardized test score,
college admisssions, etc.). I think that many of the non-Orthodox in
the town would be quite satisfied with this.
I hope now you can understand "how they can take all that free money and
open their mouths with any criticism of the Orthdox."
Although, I must add that even within the dynamic of the tradeoff
described above (extra revenues in exchange for a socioeconomic
downgrade), rarely is the substantial criticism hurled at the Orthodox
comminuty UNTIL the Orthodox community starts griping about its local
tax dollars and begins to make attempts to influence the budget either
by getting Orthodox people elected to the school board or by organizing
the community to vote en masse against the annual budget.
And one might offer another mean-spirited thought experiment along the
lines of what you have suggested (I have borrowed your basic framework):
How about this idea? Take one of these Orthodox communities and get
every local school to refuse to provide special needs education and
early intervention unless the families foot the entire bill for the cost
of the care provided. Let the conniptions and panic play out in the
local Orthodox community when many families realize they now have to
come up with anything from an extra $5,000 to $50,000 per year to pay
for the education of their most vunerable and needy children.
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From: Carl Singer <casinger@...>
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 07:10:37 -0400
Subject: Tuition, taxes and impact on public schools
> These people are not thinking rationally! Don't they realize the huge
> windfall they're getting? Do they ever think about what the impact
> would be if all the Orthodox would actually use their schools and the
> district had to pay for all those teachers and extra school buildings
> that would be needed!
>
> I just can't fathom how they can take all that free money and open their
> mouths with any criticism of the Orthdox. Wow!
>
> How about this idea? Take one of these ungrateful communities and get
> every Orthodox family to register every one of their children in public
> school. Let the conniptions and panic play out in the press as they
> realize that they have to double their budget overnight to accommodate
> all these extra students. Then the families can all withdraw the
> registrations on condition that the Orthodox get a little appreciation
> for the support they give, asking nothing in return.
As I recall a similar threat was contemplated, but not enacted, during a
zoning dispute in Highland Park, NJ. (The day school needed zoning
minor variances to expand.) Highland Park was a small enough town that
the impact of several hundred students registering would have been
significant.
But the politics of cooperation tend to have longer lasting and better
results than the politics of threat.
Carl
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From: Bernard Raab <beraab@...>
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:52:13 -0400
Subject: We ain't that good
>From: Carl Singer :
>The above posting, admittedly taken out of context, hit a few nerves.
>
>First while we can all take pride in the little Einstein's (from pre-K
>through graduate school) who are Orthodox, to think that our
>demographics are significantly different than those of other similar
>communities (Jewish or otherwise) is wrong. Take in account factors
>such as parents education level, household income, household "learning
>culture", etc. -- and the differences flatten out.
That is exactly the way a statistician would "prove" by normalizing
(i.e., taking into account) such factors as "parents education level,
household income, household "learning culture", etc." that Jewish kids
are no different from any other kids. But here we are dealing with the
"un-normalized" population. The Jewish families in the suburbs, and I
suspect in the cities as well, do tend to have a higher education level
and "learning culture" than the population at large. Our outsize
accomplishments in all fields of intellectual endeavor attest to this
tendency.
>Lastly -- gearing our education system's "vision" towards any cohort,
>Einstein or Gimpel the fool, is a terrible mistake.
I am grateful for this comment, bacause it would be a tragedy if we
geared our school system exclusively toward the "baby Einstein" cohort.
In fact, there was a time, not so long ago, that many Yeshivos did not
have a place for the slower students, although I believe that this is
less common today, B"H.
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From: Stuart Feldhamer <stuart.feldhamer@...>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:49:25 -0400
Subject: RE: Yeshiva High School Staffing
I feel the need to add a data point here. I went to Yeshiva of Flatbush
High School. We had 3 or so librarians, who were very nice people but
who never did anything useful (that I know of) for me or for any of the
other students, and I spent more time in the library than most. Friends
of mine used to point out how they added no value other than telling us
to be quiet if we were discussing our school subjects too loudly.
Regarding guidance counsellors, in junior or senior year we had a
dedicated one. I remember being surprised that the school was paying for
us to use this guy's services for free. He was very nice, and I had
several sessions with him. It wasn't college guidance, but rather more
like a personal therapy session. I think I did it more to get out of
class than anything else. I won't say it wasn't at all beneficial, but I
don't think I needed it.
Then there was one of the assistant principals who doubled as some kind
of college guidance person. I would probably never have even talked to
this person as I had my own ideas about where I wanted to go for
college, but as I did somewhat well on my PSATs I was a National Merit
Scholarship semi-finalist. In order to become a finalist you have to
submit some essay to them and if they like the essay you get the
scholarship. I was required to see this person to work on my essay. She
made me spend a lot of time editing it, etc. and then I submitted it and
did not get the scholarship. So I probably could have done without this
interaction as well. Oh also, there were another two college guidance
person on top of the two people I already mentioned, neither of whom I
ever interacted with at all.
Stuart
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End of Volume 55 Issue 43