Lakewood Activists Meet With NJ Assemblyman Schaer to Promote School Choice

PHOTO: Members of Agudath Israel’s Lefkowitz Leadership Initiative continue to mobilize the community to promote School Choice around the country. Lakewood activists met Tuesday night with NJ Assemblyman Gary Schaer at the home of Reb Yaakov Friedman.

“School Choice, a movement which gives parents the ability to choose the school for their children and aims to ease the prohibitive tuition costs, is a high priority for our community,” says Agudath Israel. “Our elected officials need to understand that this is an issue of deep concern to us and recognize that we appreciate their efforts on our behalf. These meetings are a big step forward in continuing to strengthen relationships between our representatives and community advocates.”

Earlier meetings included those in Far Rockaway with Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder, in New Hempstead, with Senator David Carlucci, and Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz in Queens.

Reb Yaakov explained that he felt it was imperative to host this event, “We have so many families here in Lakewood struggling with tuition, sometimes for 5 or 6 children, so I feel that it is a privilege to contribute in whatever way to help our families.” The need to help large families in the community with the burden of tuition was discussed at length, and one of the participants shared the startling fact that there were 600 babies born to the frum community in Lakewood in one local hospital in just one recent month.

Mayor Ackerman praised Assemblyman Schaer and Agudath Israel, saying “it is always very refreshing to be with Gary, he is relentless in his efforts to bring things to fruition and is a source of inspiration for all our local politicians here in Lakewood. I think the meetings organized by Agudath Israel of America are very productive as it brings awareness about this important issue.”

The events, organized by Rabbi Shai Markowitz, Director of the Lefkowitz Leadership Initiative, focus on various school choice initiatives including vouchers, funding for non-public schools and special education programs, busing and more. [TLS]

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9 COMMENTS

  1. Move to the amazing Frum community of South Bend, IN.

    Indiana vouchers cover yeshivah tuition!

    2 hour drive from Chicago, 2 hour flight from Newark.

    Kosher Grocery. Yeshivah, High school, Bais Yaakov.

    4br homes on tree lined blocks sell for $125k. Imagine a mortgage of $700 a month which includes property taxes!

  2. tuition costs is the least of the problems facing parents on momday witout a school to send their children.this is a crises facing us today…b’h for new babies/but they don’t need a school on monday…they are dealing with apples when the oranges are crying for help!

  3. Tuition is the reason for kids not having schools.I personally know very capable people who would open new schools that would take anybody but they don’t have the funding to do it . The tuitions in Lakewood are nowhere near enough to build buildings and run schools especially high schools. So the reason people don’t have schools to go to on Monday is only because of the tuition crisis .If there was a mechanism to fund our schools then there would be such an abundance of schools that every girl would be wanted by 5 Schools just like if us with Msdivtas today .

  4. I spoke with Assemblyman Schaer at length about a week after I testified before the Joint Legislative Committee on Public Schools. He told me the same thing that Senator Rice of Essex told me, that the solutions have to come from within our own community. It is unlikely that they will come from Trenton.

    I have been a math teacher at Lakewood High School for over a decade, am licensed school administrator, member of the NJ bar, and wrote numerous papers on education law and our district. One solution is to take advantage of Option Two in the administrative code to provide free high school education to our children in the place of their choice. The district would receive about $17,000 dollars for each child, about four times the cost to the district.

    One day, the board of education will find solutions to the tuition crisis, state funding conundrum, educational access injustice and its high outside attorney fees within its own organization.

  5. “School Choice, a movement which gives parents the ability to choose the school for their children and aims to ease the prohibitive tuition costs, is a high priority for our community,”
    There is school choice ,however if you choose to attend private school that is an expense that should not be the burden of taxpayers who use the public education system

  6. Very good mr. Lang. What you say is very accurate. They do much of this in other towns and only made the school system stronger with more growth rather than cutting programs.

Comments are closed.