Should private, religious schools be allowed to rent space in former public school buildings at rates that are far below market? New York State says no.
Yeshivat Avir Yakov, a chasidic school in Rockland County, N.Y., had occupied a building that was formerly Hillcrest Elementary School, which it was leasing at below-market rates from the East Ramapo Central School District, the Jewish Week is reporting.
Steven White, a parent of children in that public district, filed a lawsuit claiming the school board was illegally taking resources from the public schools and supporting the yeshiva, and one school board member, Robert Forrest, sent a petition to New York State Education Commissioner John King about it. Mr King annulled the yeshiva’s lease a week ago, saying, “I cannot find, on this record, that the Board took reasonable steps to ensure that it was getting the best deal possible.” Mr White said the commissioner’s ruling “substantiates the primary complaint in our civil rights lawsuit: that the school board is illegally diverting resources from public education to support the yeshivas.”
Most school board members and most voters in the district are Orthodox Jews, whose own children attend yeshivas. The board has recently made major cuts to the public schools’ programs, but accepting much less than they can get for unused school buildings apparently struck Mr King the wrong way. Mr Forrest said the yeshiva was leasing the school building at about 60 percent below the fair market rental value.
The Rockland Times quoted Mr King as insisting that “prior to disposing of school district property by either sale or lease, the Board take all steps necessary to ensure that it makes a reasonably informed decision, and obtains the best deal possible, including taking any and all reasonable steps to assess the property’s fair market value or fair market rental value.”
The use of below-market rates for leasing the school building has cast a light on other situations where public money is being used to support private or religious schools.
“Dollars are directed not where they are most needed (rural and poor schools), but where people are most adept at navigating the system,” said FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai in a recent statement calling for an overhaul of the federal E-rate program. According to his speech, the United Talmudical Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y., which is chasidic, has received “tens of millions of E-rate dollars over the years” and in 2012, one of the school’s service providers billed E-rate $81,600 for Internet access alone. “This is all rather curious because the school’s students are explicitly forbidden from accessing the Internet.”
