East Ramapo, NY – Budget Watchdog Focuses on School Spending

Ramapo, NY – It has played a vocal role in the defeat of at least three multimillion-dollar school budget proposals in the past six years.

It has been credited with helping private-school community members gain a majority on a public school board.

It is the South East Ramapo Taxpayers Association, a budget watchdog group led by Monsey resident Kalman Weber. The group is revered by some as a champion for the welfare of large religious families struggling to make ends meet. Others criticize it as an organization working to deprive public schools of needed funds.

In the East Ramapo school district, where the Orthodox Jewish population has swelled as enrollment in the public schools – largely made up of black and Hispanic students – has shrunk, Weber and his group have emerged as the most visible representatives of the religious, private-school community.

Yet for all its influence, some question if the association is really a group at all, or mainly the work of just one man – Weber, himself.

Weber chuckled at the notion that SERTA was a one-man operation.

"If people want to say that it's me, if they want to give me the credit," he said, "I'm not going to deny the credit, it's very fine with me."

But, he added, "I couldn't do a tenth of what the organization does on my own."

Weber characterizes SERTA as a loose-knit group with a core consisting of five to 10 people. He called them "activists who work really, really hard" to analyze school and library budgets, looking for what they consider unnecessary spending that Weber said resulted in higher taxes for East Ramapo residents. [journalnews]