East Ramapo parents sue state Education Department

East Ramapo parents are taking legal action against the state Education Department for failing to bring oversight to the splintered district, according to court documents.

The lawsuit filed in state Supreme Court in Albany by an educational advocacy group charges the state has failed to take steps to make sure that East Ramapo students receive a "sound education."

"The state cannot sit by and do nothing,” said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, the advocacy group bringing the lawsuit. “These problems have been documented over and over again. The state has an obligation to intervene.”

The action targets the state Education Department as advocates for public school children struggle for resources while the school board is dominated by men who send their children to private schools.

A three-person team of monitors that spent months studying the district concluded in a December report that the board favors the needs of children in private schools over the needs of youngsters in public schools and runs the district poorly. A report done a year earlier by a state monitor, Hank Greenberg, came to similar conclusions.

Neither study included a forensic audit. No allegations of criminal wrongdoing were made.

Both reports recommended state oversight of the troubled district, which has unusual demographics. The majority of youngsters who live in the district, 24,000 students, go to private schools, mostly yeshivas, while the 9,000 public school students are mostly Latino and black.

Opponents of state oversight contend that a monitor with veto power would undermine the rights of voters who elected the member of the school board.

The lawsuit contends the state has not lived up to its responsibility to children because it has a "duty to intervene and take any necessary and appropriate actions to remedy the board's failure," according to documents.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three parents of East Ramapo students: David Curry, Luis Nivelo and Romel Alvarez.

"We don't need any more reports or any more studies," Curry said. "We need action."

A spokeswoman for the Education Department declined comment, as did a spokesman for the Board of Education.

Public school advocates will continue to push for a state-appointed monitor with power to override the Board of Education even as the lawsuit makes its way through the courts, said Oscar Cohen, a longtime resident and education chairman of the Spring Valley branch of the NAACP.

"We are using every avenue possible so the children get access to the opportunities that they have missed for the last several years,” Cohen said. “Every day that goes by without the services they need is a day that will never be made up.”

The parents are represented by Brad Elias of the the New York City law firm O’Melveny & Myers, as well as Sciarra and Wendy Lecker of the Education Law Center.