lakewood kollel wife

Thursday, March 08, 2007

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HIGH SCHOOL CRISIS

[Thank you "anonymous" for today's post. To all readers - please comment on any topic, your comment might be tomorrow's post - KollelVeib]

It seems like most of you dont have any idea of the facts. The powers at large in Lakewood have been warned for several years that there is a population explosion and that there is a severe crisis and shortage of high school slots. Last year, even with the opening of a new school that immediately filled up with almost 60 kids, there was still a shortage of close to 40 spots. About 20-25 of those kids were shoehorned into the existing schools to create insanely overcrowded class sizes, and everyone including the Roshei Yeshiva etc, agreed that it was impossible to force more kids on these already bloated class sizes. For the other 15-20 a new school was opened in September that these kids attended until recently.

For various reasons this new school was not successful and recently closed down. Although the existing schools were told by everybody last September that it was understood that they were overcrowded and could not take any new kids, the schools on their own agreed that these kids were a Rachmonus and accommodations were made several weeks ago to divide all those kids residing in Lakewood between the 4 existing schools. The kids were all accepted and were already in their new classes for a while.

Subsequent to this, one of the principals received information that led him to make a determination that ONE particular student was not compatible with his school and could possibly be detrimental. This was a very narrow disagreement between the principal and the askonim as to whether the information he was basing this on was in fact accurate or not.

It is being portrayed on this blog as if the schools did not rise to the occasion.In fact just the opposite is true. These were the same kids that last year were deeemed by everybody including the Roshei Yeshiva not to have any spots in the existing schools ( for lack of space ) and yet the schools did not play hardball, but out of Rachmonus put seats almost in the hallways in an effort to mitigate these kids hurt. To portray the schools and town in such a negative fashion just because one individual had an honest disagreement about whether or not ONE particular kid was detrimental to his school based on what he believed to be concrete reliable information, is totally unjustified and shows the danger of these blogs that take unverified information and just write Loshon Hora on anyone they choose based on flimsy groundless hearsay.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

SCHOOLS CLOSED

[Thank you "Yeshivaguy" for today's post. To all readers - please comment on any topic, your comment might be tomorrow's post - KollelVeib]

Just got a computer-generated call saying that the Roshei Yeshiva and Mashgiach are closing all girls high schools until further notice b/c there are girls still out of school.

I don't see the point. All this does is create hassle for parents and give kids a free day of vacation. It doesn't create new space in the already-packed schools. Instead of decreeing no-school days, let them open a new H.S. under the yeshiva's aegis to relieve the overcrowding.