www.preserve-ramapo.com
“Elissa Berkowitz walked to synagogue with her parents while growing up on Staten Island.
Her dream has been to do the same with her children, raising them in the same Orthodox Jewish lifestyle.
“Growing up, it was beautiful to have a safe walk to synagogue with my mother and father to pray and be part of youth groups and a community,” the 33-year-old married mother of three said.
“I want that for my children,” she said. “I was in shock how this will become a reality for us.” [Read more…]
“While the district has touted staffing and programming additions in recent years, the district had 332 fewer staff positions in the 2018-2019 school year compared to 2008-2009, when cuts kicked in.
From The Journal News
East Ramapo interim Superintendent Raymond Giamartino Jr. on Monday confirmed that the district planned to lay off teachers and combine classrooms, an unusual mid-year move that adds even more disruption to a year that’s seen buildings repeatedly shut by COVID-19 cases.
Giamartino pinned the blame for cuts on the current contingency budget, which limits how the district can spend, and the millions of dollars invested in a legal defense on behalf of the district during a federal civil rights court challenge brought by the Spring Valley NAACP – a case the district ultimately lost. [Read more…]
Ward 1 – Ashley Victoria Leveille, 582 votes; term ending June 30, 2024
Ward 2 – Sabrina Charles-Pierre, 744 votes; term ending June 30, 2022
Ward 3 – Sherry McGill, 499 votes; term ending June 30, 2023
Ward 4 – Shimon Z. Rose, 880 votes; term ending June 30, 2024
Ward 5 – Yossi Weiss, 1,233 votes; term ending June 30, 2023
Ward 6 – Yehuda Weissmandl, 1,382 votes; term ending June 30, 2022
Ward 7 – Harry Grossman, 1,078; term ending June 30, 2024
Ward 8 – Mark W. Berkowitz, 1,832; term ending June 30, 2023
Ward 9 – Ephraim Weissmandl, 1,581 votes; term ending June 30, 2022
Newly elected board members must take the oath of office no later than March 2, 2021 and shall commence their terms once that is done. It is anticipated that board members will take the oath of office and hold the first meeting of the newly elected board on March 2, 2021.
Please visit www.ercsd.org/TrusteeVote for more information.
“After more than three years of litigation and millions in legal fees, voters in Rockland County’s East Ramapo school district finally get to choose.
And the choices they’ll make in Tuesday’s mail in election for nine seats on the district’s school board could alter the future of a community divided along racial lines, where dialogue is hard to come by and differences had become so entrenched it required a federal judge’s intervention. [Read more…]
Rockland County Times
Ramapo residents’ pleas to halt zoning and building code changes to the northeastern quadrant of the town fell on deaf ears last Wednesday, Jan 20, during a hastily arranged Zoom meeting. After all was said and done, the Town Board unanimously voted to continue a process it began in 2018 that proposes to re-zone and re-purpose its semi-rural northeast corridor, making way for future development. [Read more…]
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Ward 1 Ashley Leveille |
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Ward 2 Sabrina Charles-Pierre |
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Ward 3 Sherry McGill |
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Ward 9 Brenda Carole Anderson |
Linda Valentine Ward 4 (Please Write in Linda’s name)
Robert Romanowski in Ward 6 [Read more…]
“NAACP lawyers say the East Ramapo school district owes them $4.3 million for winning a voting rights lawsuit decided in May.
The district says the tab should be $1.
If forced to pay the full award, the district might have to fire some 50 teachers, administrators, psychologists and others in a mostly-minority district already facing $5.4 million in unanticipated costs from the Covid-19 pandemic, interim district superintendent Raymond Giamartino says. [Read more…]
“A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision declaring East Ramapo’s method for electing its school board violated the Voting Rights Act.
The lower court decision handed a victory to the NAACP in its decade-long battle to wrest board control away from a white, Orthodox Jewish voting bloc.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the East Ramapo school district’s claim that policy preferences like lower taxes – not race – had led to school boards dominated by Orthodox Jewish candidates.
They noted the nine-member board has pursued policies contrary to the interests of the the district’s 11,000 public-school students, nearly all of whom are Black or Latino. [Read more…]
“The village has agreed to review a Hasidic Jewish school’s expansion plans, after settling a federal civil rights lawsuit which claimed the village discriminated against and blocked the project.
Under the agreement reached in U.S. District Court, Central United Talmudical Academy of Monsey gets a promise that its updated expansion plans will be reviewed in a timely manner by the village land-use boards, while the village gets the school’s promise to follow village procedures.
Airmont also is relieved of a legal burden. The village still faces a federal lawsuit from a coalition of the congregations and civil action by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. The village previously lost two cases involving discriminatory zoning blocking residential houses of worship and dormitory housing involving Hasidic and Orthodox Jews since the village’s 1991 incorporation. [Read more…]
“Federal prosecutors are urging a judge to sentence six Ramapo residents to prison for their involvement in stealing millions of dollars from a federal program designed to provide computer technology to underprivileged students.
Peretz Klein and his wife, Susan Klein, both of Spring Valley; and Monsey residents Simon Goldbrenner, Moshe Schwartz, Ben Klein, Sholem Steinberg and Aron Melber all entered guilty pleas to conspiracy charges in February.
Sentencing had been delayed from June due to the coronavirus pandemic and is expected in mid-January, according to a memorandum submitted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. A hearing is likely after defense attorneys file their sentencing memorandums with the court. [Read more…]