The tension between supporters of public and parochial schools is never far below the surface in many communities. But the divide in East Ramapo, New York, also has the potential to exacerbate tensions among Jews and African-Americans and Hispanics in a way that is setting off alarm bells among those concerned with smoothing over community relations.
As the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, the situation in the East Ramapo School District in Rockland County, 35 miles northwest of New York City, is one that is almost guaranteed to start a fight between the two communities. The majority of the population in the area is Orthodox Jews, many of them either Hasidic or belonging to the category of Jewish belief that is commonly labeled “ultra”-Orthodox. They send their children to Jewish day schools. Over 20,000 students attend yeshivas in the area, a number that dwarfs the 8,100 mostly African-American or Hispanic kids who attend the public schools.
The problem arises from the fact that the Orthodox Jews in the township have exercised their franchise and elected members of their own community to the district’s School Board. A majority of the board now represents a sector of the population that has no use for the public schools. That majority has closed some public schools and the district has facilitated special-education services for Orthodox children at private Jewish schools outside East Ramapo rather than at the local public schools. This has angered the minority in the area who lodged complaints with the federal government about possible civil-rights violations. The Anti-Defamation League is also expressing interest in the situation with a view to opposing the decisions of the majority.
The situation in East Ramapo is not entirely unique. The difference in this case appears to center on the fact that the primary opponents of the Orthodox are not non-Orthodox Jews, as they were in Lawrence, New York, and Lakewood, New Jersey, but blacks and Hispanics who see the problem not just in terms of a cultural or religious conflict but in those of race.
The notion of a school district’s being run by people who are more devoted to the interests of institutions that are outside the public sector strikes many people as somehow unwholesome. And if the Orthodox Jews’ opponents can prove that minority children have been illegally shortchanged, you can bet that higher echelons of government will step in and override the local majority’s wishes. But however unnatural this situation may seem to those who see public schools as not only essential to the welfare of the entire population but to the fabric of democracy itself, it must be acknowledged that the needs of most of the district’s students should not be a matter of indifference. Indeed, it is only logical that the public-education establishment should be operated on a scale that reflects the smaller number of students in government-run schools.
Liberal Jewish groups have traditionally been in the forefront of advocating a high wall of separation between church and state that has led to severe restrictions on the provision of services to religious schools by public districts. The motivation behind this advocacy was not only a matter of Constitutional principle but also rooted in a belief that a religious minority like the Jews needed to be protected from the tyranny of the majority. But in East Ramapo, it is no small irony that the rigid application of these principles may serve to shortchange the needs of the majority of the districts students who just happen to be Jews.
