# This American Life 534: "A Not-So-Simple Majority" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 17, 2014, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776 "2014-09-17T23:30:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Renee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/renee/32/287_2.png) [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/21 "2014-09-19T13:04:34Z")
True, they were really in a can’t win situation. No compromise. ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/22 "2014-09-19T13:52:47Z")
I don’t understand why the schools didn’t follow through on their own threats. For years, they apparently had a truce of we will not look too hard at the fact that your schools are not teaching certain subjects to educational standards if you agree not to take over our school board. Once the truce was broken, why didn’t they make good on their end? ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/23 "2014-09-19T14:02:39Z")
I didn’t hear the whole story, but weren’t there instances of straight up corruption? I believe the school board sold property at greatly reduced rates to yeshivas. Was there any talk of investigation into these deals? ---
**Author:** ![Indyellen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/indyellen/32/4176_2.png) [@Indyellen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indyellen)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/24 "2014-09-19T17:32:13Z")
> [@Renee](#): > > That wasn’t a high school student, it was a teacher (I think) who gathered some old schedules to show the board. I actually wasn’t so moved by that because I knew people in high school with similar schedules, chosen because they were easy. I would have been more impressed with statistics than a small selection of schedules hand-picked to make a point. I’d have to re-listen to be sure, but I think it was a student who had graduated. She started collecting data while she was still going to a school in the district, but didn’t go before the board until after she had graduated. > [@madmonk28](#): > > I didn’t hear the whole story, but weren’t there instances of straight up corruption? I believe the school board sold property at greatly reduced rates to yeshivas. Was there any talk of investigation into these deals? There was one sale where the school property was valued at $6M and the yeshiva was offering $3M, so the school board went and had it reappraised to $3M. The appraiser has been indicted on charges (I don’t recall which), and eventually the state voided the sale. ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/25 "2014-09-19T18:09:26Z")
The sale eventually went through anyway at an intermediate price: > **[East Ramapo: Board votes to sell Hillcrest school to yeshiva](https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/rockland/2014/07/03/east-ramapo-hillcrest-sale-avir-yakov/12202213/)** > > The East Ramapo Board of Education on Thursday voted to sell the Hillcrest to Congregation Avir Yakov for $4.9 million. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/26 "2014-09-19T18:29:54Z")
[quote=“Roderick\_Femm, post:2, topic:698776”] Leaving aside the tactics (comparisons to the holocaust, hiring asshole lawyers) I am not unsympathetic to the Hassidic point of view. At what point does the social contract break down because it benefits too few people? In this case, public schools were being under-used for an understandable reason. Maybe (I’m not saying absolutely, just maybe) the original townspeople need to be more flexible with change and come up with alternative methods of schooling for what is left of the town that needs it. /QUOTE] The schools were not being underused. The resources were being cut so drastically that the public school students are essentially being denied an education. The school board projected declining enrollment, but enrollment did not in fact decline. The point was made repeatedly that the public school students were largely lower middle class or poor blacks and Hispanics. Essentially what you had in this situation was the affluent sector of the community deciding that the poor didn’t need good schools and basically tearing them apart and selling the remains to the private schools at a bargain price. At one point, a school board member told the public school families that if they didn’t like it, their option was to move somewhere else. They obviously have no shits at all for the public school students that they were in charge of. > [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > I just listened to this. I wish you had posted this in another forum, because this was just an infuriating hour to listen to. I would be interested in hearing what infuriated you and others. > [@Renee](#): > > That wasn’t a high school student, it was a teacher (I think) who gathered some old schedules to show the board. I actually wasn’t so moved by that because I knew people in high school with similar schedules, chosen because they were easy. I would have been more impressed with statistics than a small selection of schedules hand-picked to make a point. It was not a teacher. It was a student. It was a teacher who said that the lack of classes being offered made it so that some students would need more than four years to graduate. > [@madmonk28](#): > > I didn’t hear the whole story, but weren’t there instances of straight up corruption? I believe the school board sold property at greatly reduced rates to yeshivas. Was there any talk of investigation into these deals? There was talk of state agencies investigating and in some cases ordering changes, but the school board has thus far successfully tied everything up on court. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/27 "2014-09-19T18:53:54Z")
The Jewish Week has been following this story and it is largely sympathetic to the public school families-- [http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york/east-ramapo-schools-fight](http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york/east-ramapo-schools-fight) – > [@](#): > > In a petition to Gov. Andrew Cuomo the organization, Uri L’Tzedek, asks for state “fiscal and administrative oversight” of the Rockland County district, where the board has slashed academic offerings, extracurricular programs and more than 400 staff positions over the past five years. Between 2009 and 2012, elementary school class size has risen from an average of 20 to 25 ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/28 "2014-09-19T22:25:12Z")
Somehow I knew ,even before reading the transcript, that this would be related to the school district refusing to pay yeshiva tuition for special needs students. The district does have to provide education, and pays private tuition when when it’s necessary because the child’s educational needs cannot be served in a public school - but the district cannot legally pay private school tuition for a child who can be served in a public school simply because the parents want the child in a religious school. That’s apparently what caused the end of the arrangement. It seems that East Ramapo is doing so anyway, although they’ve been told by the state that it is not legal. They even hired a more expensive attorney to help find a loophole. Which makes it look like the budget is not about finances as much as it is revenge. ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/29 "2014-09-19T23:26:38Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I would be interested in hearing what infuriated you and others. The worst part is that it seems to be the entire community of Hasidim in this town that is complicit here. You can always find a few wingnuts in any group, but here we have a situation that would fall apart if not for the voting bloc of people who apparently agree with this reprehensible behavior. If I’m being honest, I was definitely struggling with issues of anti-Semitism listening to what was going on here. Personally, if I feel that sort of bigotry creeping up in myself, I can generally tamp it down by reminding myself that the behavior is just a few individuals and don’t represent the group as a whole. But, in this case, it does apparently represent the group’s opinion; if they didn’t agree, then the school board wouldn’t have the votes to continue. Though your post that the East Ramapo group has been vocally condemned by other Jewish groups helps allay that quite a bit. Is it still bigotry if you only dislike a single community and it’s based on the behavior of the community as a whole?😕 I’m open to the possibility that there are lovely members of this community, but they appear to be silently lovely. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/30 "2014-09-20T00:39:57Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > Is it still bigotry if you only dislike a single community and it’s based on the behavior of the community as a whole?😕 I’m open to the possibility that there are lovely members of this community, but they appear to be silently lovely. My fellow North Carolinians recently voted in a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and I thought that overall that made my fellow North Carolinians dicks. Sure, there are some good ones, but fuck 'em overall for this vote. I see no reason why I should apply different standards to the community in this story. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776/31 "2014-09-20T00:40:33Z")
I listened to the podcast (thanks for posting it, **carlb** ). I’m completely unapologetic about how pissed off I am. What those people are doing is just awful. It just goes to show that every group has a subgroup that makes members of the larger group say, “Those assjerks are making the rest of us look bad!” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-american-life-534-a-not-so-simple-majority/698776.md?page=1)