Rockland County Community Gathers For Networking Event To Focus On Education Aid

Photo Credit: Marc Gronich

Rockland County District Attorney Tom Walsh sits with chassidic attendees at the meet-and-greet reception. He delivered brief remarks to the audience.

Agudath Israel of Rockland County held its third networking event for Jews and non-Jews concerned about Jewish issues with regard to education and the physically challenged.

A popular topic at the legislative reception was how a $20 million deficit in the town of East Ramapo School District turned into a $30 million surplus. Senator Bill Weber (R – Montebello, Rockland County) is the ranking member of the Disabilities Committee and a member of the Education Committee. Weber, a certified public accountant by profession, wanted answers from the state education department and the fiscal monitors who declared the deficit existed and then found the money after taxes increased by 4.38 percent – a tax hike that would have been unnecessary if the state bureaucrats hadn’t declared a deficit.

Senator Bill Weber (R – Montebello, Rockland County) is a fan-favorite of the chassidic community and received accolades from many attendees.

“The commissioner, the SED [State Education Department], and the monitor were telling us the district was $20 million in the red. We needed a spin-up in foundation aid,” Weber recalled. “If they didn’t get it by July, they weren’t going to make payroll. SED was saying all along the district was $20 million in the hole and they needed this money to open the doors. That’s a dire situation. Then we find out that’s not the case but they actually have a $31 million surplus. That’s a $50 million swing, and the answer I get from the commissioner is that they are going to need the [the forthcoming revenue from the tax hike] anyway.”

A report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, an arm of the SUNY system, issued a report earlier this month about how to more fairly improve education aid disbursement in the state budget.

“I’m hopeful that we act upon some of the recommendations from the Rockefeller Foundation aid study. There are a lot of things in there that will help the school districts in Rockland County,” Weber told The Jewish Press. “All of the school districts in Rockland County will be best served by a change in the regional cost index.”

“Some of the other formula recommendation changes talk about factoring school-aged children as opposed to just public school children,” he continued. “We have an ever-growing private school community not only in East Ramapo but in the other districts that are suffering. Having some of the changes made to the formula to account for all school-aged children will get the money to the districts that need it so that the public and private school students will get the best education they can. The school districts won’t be fighting over the same money. I’m hoping we act on that.”

Another voice at the event was Assemblyman-elect Aron Wieder (D – Spring Valley, Rockland County) who promised to be the go-to person for solving constituent problems in his district, the 97th Assembly District.

“East Ramapo [School District] is extremely important…for us to focus on,” Wieder told The Jewish Press. “I hope to meet and beat the expectations of the people who put me into office. We’re going to work every single day to accomplish that.”

Wieder announced that his chief of staff will be Shloimie Kurtzner. “There’s a whole lot of work to do in Albany and you can never do it by yourself. Every elected official is only as good as their staff,” Wieder said. “East Ramapo was forced to increase property taxes because there was no money, and all of a sudden, within a couple of months, they found $30 million…. I know that people struggle very hard to put food on their table, and yet the state found a way to squeeze more money out of them to pay taxes…. We need to resolve this because the state is tightening their grip on the private schools. These are bureaucrats in Albany that want to tell me and my wife how to educate our children. They have no business in doing that. We are going to resolve that in this coming session.”

Congressman Michael Lawler (R – Pearl River, Rockland County) appeared at the event via Zoom from Washington, D.C. to offer some words of encouragement. Although the audio malfunctioned throughout most of his remarks, the last few seconds were captured. Lawler touted the House’s passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act. He expressed his dismay about the Senate holding it up. “Unfortunately, to date, we have not been able to get that bill through the United States Senate. Senator [Charles] Schumer [the Majority Leader and New York’s senior senator] has unfortunately sat on that bill for seven months,” Lawler said. “It has languished in the Senate, but I am not deterred by that. I will fight to get that across the finish line in the next Congress.

“There’s a lot of work ahead. I know how important it is to all of you that we continue to stand up and protect school choice. As I have in the Assembly, as I have in Congress, we will continue to do that. To make sure that parents, not bureaucrats, have the ultimate say over their child’s education as we protect the rights for religious education for all of our children.”

Even though he knew everyone in the room, Ari Rosenblum, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation and Foundation of Rockland County, based in West Nyack, found the networking to be beneficial. “We recognize and respect the important work that Agudath Israel does in the community. We’re happy to partner with them on issues such as security,” Rosenblum, 55, told The Jewish Press. “In a room like this we really have two elements. We have the legislative and elected elements. These are people we’re working with on various levels – municipal, county, state, and federal level. There is a give-and-take on the things our community needs and the things they can provide and represent.”

A native of Toronto, Canada, Rosenblum took over the reins of the organization in 2021. It now boasts a $1.1 million budget. He was formerly a baal koreh and baal tefillah at The Riverdale Minyan in The Bronx neighborhood. For 12 years, he served as spiritual leader of Beth Ezekiel, a small synagogue and community in Owen Sound, Ontario. Rosenblum is a proud father of five. He moved to the U.S. in 2017 and now lives in Teaneck, N.J., which is not far from his office in West Nyack. He has also worked as vice-president of development for Chabad House Bowery, one of the country’s largest campus Chabad operations, and as CEO of the campus advocacy organization Hasbara Fellowships.

The issue of security is a priority for Rosenblum. “We’ve been working hard since I got here to build bridges in the community. Our security initiative has built some tremendous bridges. We now have a network of more than 200 Jewish institutions in Rockland that we are consulting with, providing services for, doing assessments for, doing training for,” Rosenblum told The Jewish Press. “It’s really important to reach out to them and for them to see us in their environment, our environment. We’re one Jewish community. We have to be everywhere. We have to be responsive to everyone.

“I’m not going to talk about the specific security protocols, but the Jewish community campus we’re in, in West Nyack, has security protocols and we ourselves in our office do as well.”

Rockland County has two newly-minted Assemblymen, both Democrats. It remains to be seen how effective freshman lawmakers can be on the education issues confronting the residents of the county.