Lakewood - anyone still school-less?

amother

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 3:36 am

The vaad is wealthy individuals who have power. They have people in the police department that knows them etc. noone is going to open up another vaad without their permission.
The same with schools. The vaad doesn't open up schools I know someone wrote that but its not true. That person was making it up to make Lakewood look good the same way she lied that Lakewood pushed off opening until everyone was in school. Lakewood pushed off opening of schools for five days and then opened anyways even though ten girls still were not in schools.

If you want to open a school you go to the vaad and make sure they approve you otherwise they won't endorse you and noone will want to go to your school. Also schools in Lakewood are privately funded they are not funded by the vaad that was another lie written here.

Bnos rivkah in Lakewood one parent in the school just donated one million dollars to the school. This same parent never learned in bmg had a hard time getting in to schools when he moved here from Brooklyn and now the girls school all feel bad that they didn't take him in six years earlier when he applied. And yes I heard this from a school owner.

June

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 3:57 am

ora_43 wrote:

But if the issue is that there simply aren't enough schools/classrooms, and the Vaad doesn't have the power to create schools itself, how can they guarantee a solution? (I'm really asking here, not arguing)

that's not the only issue.

the school problem is only a symptom of the larger problem that has made it impossible for me to stay in Lakewood.

The community as we know it started out as a yeshiva town. R' Aharon Kotler wanted to establish a yeshiva in a small town without the distractions of a big city. For that reason, he (and his son and successor R' Schneur) often encouraged people who had left kollel to leave Lkwd as well. But even when the community grew, and many people weren't in kollel anymore, the yeshiva remained at the town's core.

In the past 20 years or so, more and more non-kollel people have been moving into Lakewood. This drastically changed the makeup of the community, as many of the newcomers are not really affiliated with the yeshiva. However, BMG wants to retain the character of Lkwd as a 'yeshiva town,' and they're trying very hard to keep the yeshiva at the center. they don't realize it's a lost cause, and Lkwd has become a very diverse community that doesn't revolve around BMG. As long as they don't realize that, they're going to have these problems.

"they" still like to believe that everyone is yeshivish, so they're only allowing yeshivish schools to open. in Lakewood, to be "not yeshivish" is to be "less than", "inferior." people pretend that they're yeshivish so they can get into schools and be accepted by their neighbors. this leads to lack of personal integrity, cognitive dissonance, chinuch problems, and more.

I think if everyone accepts that Lakewood is no longer a homogeneous community, a lot of the problems plaguing the town would be resolved. I would even consider moving back to raise my kids there.

ora_43

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 5:25 am

June wrote:

"they" still like to believe that everyone is yeshivish, so they're only allowing yeshivish schools to open.

What "they" - the vaad?

If people aren't affiliated with that community, why would they care what its leaders have to say? How would they have the power to "not allow"?

Like, when people I know decided to try to open a dati leumi school here, the question of what the hareidi community thought of it was a total non-issue (FTR, I would guess that it was a total non-issue for the hareidi community, too - this city was never "supposed to" be a hareidi city).

amother

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 5:57 am

June wrote:

I can't like his enough!!!!!!

June

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 6:14 am

ora_43 wrote:

they = the vaad, and the yeshiva.

the thing is, the people who are moving in ARE part of the community. the community is no longer solely "yeshiva people." but the yeshiva doesn't realize/accept that. which causes all these problems.

ora_43

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 6:42 am

June wrote:

By "that community" I meant the yeshiva community, which wants "yeshivish" schools. Why do the people coming in now need to listen to the yeshiva leadership, if they aren't part of the yeshiva?

Say someone decides to establish a school that will include kids whose families aren't affiliated with the yeshiva. What do the vaad and yeshiva do to prevent that?

amother

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 7:23 am

The yeshiva controls funding and bussing from the government. They will make it extremely difficult for that school to open if they don't want it. There is a huge need and such a school would have opened five years ago already but the yeshiva stopped it.
The schools get a lot of money for funding from the government and the only way such a school would work out would be for a wealthy individual to not care and open anyways and most wealthy individuals don't want to go against rosh hayeshivos.
It's not so simple. The vaad has tons of pull politically they control the town so it's really not so simple.
Schools in Lakewood get free meals from the government, catapult is free and many grants. The vaad will make sure that the school gets nothing and make it so difficult that it won't be worth it for the individual to open.

ora_43

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 8:21 am

amother wrote:

The yeshiva controls funding and bussing from the government

How is that possible? Is the yeshiva somehow the official, state-recognized representative for the community? Why couldn't a new school apply for busing without going through the yeshiva?

Quote:

The vaad will make sure that the school gets nothing and make it so difficult that it won't be worth it for the individual to open.

Are you saying that the vaad has actually prevented new schools from getting government funding in the past? Or that people assume that's what would happen?

Why does a new school need government funding in order to open? Aren't most frum schools in America completely private, ie, no government funding? I don't get why an MO school could open in LA or Detroit, etc, but not in Lakewood.

Sorry for all the questions. I want to understand.

amother

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 8:47 am

The vaad controls who the town votes in. Years ago everyone listened to whoever the vaad tells the people to vote for. Lately the people in Lakewood are not listening like they used to so maybe things will start changing. I don't know if legally Yeshiva is allowed to do what they do but you know how it works the politicians listens to whatever Yeshiva says and that's it.

And to answer your next question, yes, five years ago they wanted to open up a new with it school in Lakewood and April time Yeshiva shut it down and threatened them. Also remember you don't want to start up with the Yeshiva. How many people wants to put in such hard work to have such opposition.

To answer your question about chasidish schools the Vaad is okay with that, that is more frum than the litvish schools so it doesn't bother them.

Also every school in Lakewood gets tons of funding for every single thing. They get their phones through a government program. If there is some program out there the Lakewood schools have it. You wouldn't believe how much of the schools are funded through government programs. So a new school would have a hard time getting all this funding and they will just need a lot more money to open.

monseychick

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 10:08 am

June wrote:

(amother who is defending the vaad - your posts are painful to read. apostrophes are only used if the noun is possessive, or if the word is a contraction. regular plural nouns do not get apostrophes. sorry for putting this out in the thread; I would pm you if you weren't amother.)

Duh.... SHE OBVIOUSLY WENT TO THE BEST SCHOOL IN LAKEWOOD,

YOU KNOW, THE ONE THAT YOU NEED THE MOST CLOUT TO GET IN.. SHE LEARNED HOW TO WRITE ENGLISH THERE.....

amother

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 1:19 pm

June wrote:

I currently live in Lakewood, and you hit the nail on the head. I am chassidish, but the vaad controls the chassidish schools, too, and we have the same school issues.

Not to get off topic, another issue caused by Lakewood not changing with the times is the hours and days off. Most babysitters end at 2:00 or so, and run on yeshiva schedule. The schools, babysitters, and playgroups, are off an insane amount, because they're all on yeshiva schedule. They are conveniently forgetting that a large percentage of this town is not on yeshiva schedule anymore. So because I work and my husband is in college (he did spend the first few years of our marriage learning, which is why we moved here originally) every time there is a day off I get a stomach ache.

Chayalle

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 1:30 pm

amother wrote:

Try moving to Monsey. My nieces there have off every time there is a legal holiday, even the non-major ones.

amother

Wed, Aug 27 2014, 1:39 pm

amother wrote:

So the Vaad is stopping anybody from opening a playgroup on a different scheduale?

(BTW We own our own business with a number of emplyess so we get what it's like to not be on the same scheduale as the playgroup Morah, but we are not blaming the town, the Vaad, or anybody else. That is the reality of Lakewood if we were not willing to accept that we would move to Brooklyn , the Five Town's. Monsey or a host of other place's which do not have that problem. We want to live in Lakewood so we deal with Lakewood's realities.)

And I am still waiting for any poster who has felt the right to bash and rip the Vaad and town of Lakewood to list a single thing the Vaad can do differently that would alleviate the current crisis.

It's funny how poster's can bash at will but have a hard time coming up with anything constructive (or it can be that when you go down the mental checklist you start realizing they have done awhole lot of thing's to try and deal with the issue)