A Jewish education conspiracy?

Image by Mirza R via Flickr

Teaneck might have to give $1.4 million to a Hebrew-immersion charter school.

How far will Orthodox Jews in Englewood and Teaneck go to use public funds to educate their children -- without having to actually send them to public schools?


Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park reports on an ingenious solution to a dilemma faced by parents who send their children to Jewish day schools at a cost of up to $15,000 a year, but who still are obligated to pay high property taxes, a good part of which funds the public schools they reject.

The Shalom Academy proposes a Hebrew-immersion program to serve students in Englewood and Teaneck. If its application is approved, Teaneck might have to give the school $1.4 million of its tax dollars and Englewood slightly more, Staff Writer Pat Alex reports.

Although Alex deserves praise for laying out the elements of this proposed educational sleight-of-hand, she doesn't go far enough. She should point out that any money Englewood has to give a charter school only makes it more difficult for the district to improve its elementary and middle schools, which are virtually all black and Hispanic.


Her story also could use more background. A few years ago, a slate of Jewish candidates promised to rein in spending, but were unsuccessful in their bid for seats on the Teaneck school board, and before that,  the same thing happened in Englewood. Now, a citizens panel of rich East Hill residents has asked the city to cut aid to the public library.


And the headlines don't focus on Englewood and Teaneck. Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes sought put the Hebrew school proposal in a wider context of the Christie administration's support for such charter schools.


In Sykes' Local section, a headline on L-5 gave me a cynical chuckle:

UPDATE: ENGLEWOOD NOW A GREEN COMMUNITY

Of course, that's a reference to an environmental program. But the city has long been divided along color lines -- in its neighborhoods and in its schools -- a sad fact Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano has carefully avoided in just about everything she writes.

Dan Sforza and Christina Joseph, two of Sykes' clueless minions on the assignment desk, covered Englewood as reporters, but apparently learned nothing about the city they could pass on to Fabiano.


One of the untold stories is dramatic development of Englewood's main street and other parts of the city that accompanied big demographic changes in the past two decades, principally an influx of wealthy Orthodox Jewish families. 

What has happened to all the property taxes the city raked in from new apartments and condominium projects along Palisade Avenue and on both sides of Route 4? They certainly haven't been spent on the schools or to open a community center.


The Englewood update story in Local is just about the only municipal news in the section.