Rockland County, NY – East Ramapo voters soundly defeated the $200.5 million budget and elected four trustees.
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The Board of Education winners were Yehuda Weissmandl, 35, of Spring Valley and Daniel Beno Schwartz, 41, of New Hempstead.
Weissmandl replaces Nathan Rothschild, who resigned from the school board in April amid allegations that he engaged in mail fraud while serving as a Monsey fire commissioner.
Schwartz will take the seat currently held by Aron Wieder, who did not seek re-election.
“It was an honest campaign,” Schwartz said early this morning while waiting for results. “I think both sides ran a tough campaign; both sides campaigned hard, as well they should because the issues are important.” He added that any time voter turnout is increased, the outcome would always be better for the district.
Also elected to the board Tuesday was Moshe Hopstein, who fended off challenger Margaret Hatton, and JoAnne Thompson, who ran unopposed.
The election results mean the Board of Education will retain its Hasidic and Orthodox majority.
“The election results mean the Board of Education will retain its Hasidic and Orthodox majority.”
All along the opposition said that its issue was that the board makeup was not public school parents.
Now the truth has been published in the Urinal News. The opposition was to the religious Jews. And so it is wherever frum people makeup the majority of the board. The claims that there is not representation of public school population is a sham. The true issue is the blatant anti-semitism. And this is not hyperbole. Read or listen to the comments the opposition candidates themselves make.
Boruch Hashem the antisemitic Preserve Ramapo didn’t win!
B’h
Burech Hashem
If you read yesterdays or the day before, Lohud, aka journal news, you will see the surrounding towns complaining of increased budgets and telling the boards to cut the budget and tight the belt schools are costing. All the comments on the article are yes, right, lower taxes etc. Yet when it comes the greater Monsey area, the focus in only on the jews. Do these people really want to vote themselves a 10% tax increase? They only want it, so it’ll hurt us, even if they hurt themselves in the process. When you deal with such irrationality, then yes you can call it anti-semitism. If there would be any logic to it then you can try to have a debate. Do the math a 200million dollar budget for an inflated 8100 kids(closer to 7000 as they bus kids in now) is about 25thousand per kid.
The people voted – there is nothing more to say
Congratulations. However, let us behave like Menschen when we are on the board. Please do not text or speak on the phone while the board is being addressed by the speakers(as seen on Youtube). It does not give a good impression. At least try to give the impression that you care about what the speakers are saying.
Let us not forget it was the majority Board that voted to place this 8.88% budget up for a vote. Then they campaigned against it. This is not responsible as they should have prepared a budget they were willing to support and sell to the community. Same thing happened last year with the first budget. The Board presented it and then openly told people on voting day not to vote for it. This is not right!
What bothers me about the Schwartz, Weissmandel, and Hopstein campaign is that their campaign paraphernalia implied that they could/would make our property taxes affordable if elected. This is fallacious. There’s absolutely nothing that these elected people can do to lower our taxes.The game we play every year has the same rules and outcome: We go out and vote against the proposed budget, and the budget proposal is defeated. A new proposal is made, and a new vote is taken. It also gets defeated. Then, BINGO, the austerity budget kicks in. The austerity budget is a guaranteed shoe in for a significant increase in our property taxes. Last year it was in the seven percent range. Who knows what it will be this year. One thing is for sure. It will be considerably more than a 49.95 average increase for the taxpayer.
Public school teachers are grossly overpaid and that’s just their salaries alone, much more so when you factor in their pensions and benefits.In districts like this one where we gain majority, we should vote to cut their salaries and benefits to be in line with morahs in our schools.