East Ramapo: Senate Education chair knocks monitor plan
ALBANY – The head of the Senate Education Committee said East Ramapo should work to solve its own troubled schools and not get a state monitor to solve its problems.
Sen. Carl Marcellino, R-Nassau County, said he opposes a monitor for East Ramapo, despite two reports that have called for one to be put in place and pressure from local lawmakers to pass legislation to install a monitor.
"My inclination is to hopefully allow the district to resolve the issues on their own, without the state getting involved; without the state putting in a monitor," he told Gannett's Albany Bureau on Wednesday.
The rebuke from Marcellino is the latest criticism from Republicans of the monitor proposal sought by Democrats in the state Legislature. An effort to have a monitor with veto power over school board decisions failed in the Senate last year, and the GOP has shown no signs of changing its stance this year.
"I’m more pleased if we can work with the locals and get them to work together and get them to resolve the issues the way they should," Marcellino continued. "That’s what school boards are elected to do."
Democrats and supporters of an East Ramapo monitor have been hopeful for a different result this year in Albany after a three-person panel in December recommended one be put into place. The recommendations come after a separate review by the state in 2014 also urged for the same state oversight.
Marcellino said that a state monitor in the struggling Roosevelt schools on Long Island took years to improve the district, saying a monitor is "not necessarily the best way to do things."
"We’ll deal with it on a case-by-case basis, and we’ll look at it in more detail, but it’s been my experience with the state getting involved in school districts and starting to control school districts, i.e. Roosevelt and others, it took an inordinately long period of time," he explained.
The district has been embroiled in controversy because of its unique demographics: It has about 32,000 students, but roughly 24,000 of them attend private schools, mostly Orthodox Jewish yeshivas. Orthodox Jews control the school board, and they have been accused of directing resources to the private schools at the expense of the 8,000 public-school students, who are mainly black and Hispanic.
"As a result of this confluence of factors, the tensions in East Ramapo have grown into a chasm, full of anger and mistrust, and the District's students have continued to suffer the effects," the report in December said.
Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, have warned against a monitor, saying that the state shouldn't usurp the power of an elected school board. The East Ramapo school board has opposed a state monitor with veto power.
"Really what they want to do is overtake that school district. And we're not doing that," Flanagan, R-Suffolk County, told a Jewish group on Long Island in December.
The monitor bill passed the Assembly last year, and Sen. David Carlucci, D-Clarkstown, Rockland County, said he hopes to work with senators to change their mind about why a monitor is needed.
"I think it’s coming to the table and figuring out the best path forward. It’s unfortunate that our bill has been blocked by the majority leader," Carlucci said. "That’s something I don’t have any way around right now. That’s why we have to look at what we can do right now to ensure our children are getting the best education."