Lakewood schools please don't humiliate your child

Notsobusy

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 9:32 am

mummiedearest wrote:

let's turn this around: what is so wonderful about lakewood schools that the parents MUST get the children into one? there are schools elsewhere. even if you live in lakewood, there are schools in other nj towns. it's not unheard of to bus your child to another town for school. this isn't a question of moving somewhere else for a child's education necessarily. why are people so adamant about sending their kids to a school system that has had so many issues in terms of admissions?

when I was in high school in brooklyn, we had a bus coming from nj every day. traveling really is possible.

First of all, there is a difference between elementary age kids and high school age kids. Second of all, if there are plenty of good schools in the town you live in, why would you want your child to travel? It's definitely not the best option.

Almost everybody gets into school before school starts. Yes it's so hard to wait until then, and it shouldn't happen like that. But for the people who have to wait, they have one really difficult summer, and then once they get it, all their other kids are pretty much guaranteed a spot, no matter how many kids they have. If they make their first kid travel, they pretty much guarantee that all their kids will have to travel, with all of the difficulties that come along with it.

octopus

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 9:34 am

glutenless wrote:

I agree with you completely, but I also agree with groisamamma. Every Jewish kids should be accepted to a Jewish school, but the reality is that there is no space in Lakewood. There are so many new schools, but a new school can only grow so quickly, and an old school can only grow so much. Lakewood is growing tremendously every year and the schools can't keep up.

Everyone has a right to move wherever they want to, and it's reasonable to expect to be able to get your kids into school in a frum town. Most people do a lot of research before movinb go a new city, anyone who asks about Lakewood will be told that Lakewood schools have a space issue. It's unreasonable to expect space to miraculously open for your kids when there isn't enough space for the kids who already live here.

You do realize that the space issue in lakewood is part of a greater issue of pricing our own kind out of neighborhoods. And this happens time and time again. People move to lakewood because most ppl are priced out of brooklyn. brooklyn enrollment is down, but who can afford to live here now??

Notsobusy

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 9:40 am

octopus wrote:

Absolutely, and the same thing is happening in Lakewood now. The realtors and developers started marketing to Brooklyn people, because they realize that that's where the money is, and now the Lakewood people are getting priced out. One day Lakewood enrollment may be down too, but right now people have to face reality and not expect miracles to happen just for them.

mummiedearest

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 10:33 am

glutenless wrote:

I do get the difference. however, lakewood does not provide buses to students, iirc. so everyone has to carpool, which can cause difficulties. a child on a bus going to school 15 minutes away will still be on route for 45 minutes to an hour. that's life. if it's ok for them to be on the bus for that long, it's ok to send them to another town daily as long as the commute isn't too much longer. I'd love to know how long it takes to drive the kids to school within lakewood, I hear the traffic can be awful.

afaik, there are already people in lakewood who do this. it is an option. putting your child through the experience of being rejected to this degree may be way worse than having them wake up early to go to school elsewhere.

Chayalle

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 10:40 am

mummiedearest wrote:

If you send a child to school out of Lakewood, there are lots of things that will come up...for example, every time your child has to have a regular appointment - dentist, for example - you might as well take the day off from work - picking up the child, going to the appt, taking child back - or keeping child home for the day....and elementary age kids have far more appointments (my experience, anyway) than high schoolers.

Even high school kids find it tough to commute...I remember my nieces commuted from Manhatten to Prospect Park high school. If niece didn't feel well, coming home was complicated. Participating in extra-curricular after-hours activities is complicated. And this was in NYC where there is an excellent transportation system. Lakewood and vicinity has nothing to compare to NYC.

Notsobusy

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 10:51 am

mummiedearest wrote:

Lakewood does have bussing, there have been issues the past few years, but most kids do have busses. Some kids have long bus rides, but I don't think most have very long bus rides.

Most kids don't go through such an experience. They are five years old, they don't really know in the same way that they don't have a school to go to. And most parents wouldn't put their kids through such a potential rejection like these people did.

There are some people in Lakewood who do already do it. But there are issues besides for just waking up early.

amother

Olive

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 11:15 am

I'm the one who posted the story about the high school girl. I know the mechaneches personally so you can be assured that this story is 100 percent true. In the high school I went to in Brooklyn, our names were printed on cubbies and davening chairs through twelfth grade so, yes, it does happen in smaller high schools. I will not post the name of the school or its principal as much as I would like to - to give credit where credit is due, because she does not need an influx of parents trying to send their daughters when they are not accepted...
I do not like bashing schools or neighborhoods as it is complete loshon hara, so I am not going to post on this conversation again, just wanted to clarify this story.

saw50st8

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 11:29 am

Chayalle wrote:

I commuted from Monsey to Elizabeth every day and the commute was fantastic at that point. The bus was a lot of fun. We all participated in extra curriculars and made it work (carpools, sleeping over at other people etc).

It's not ideal for elementary school kids, but I kind of agree with groisamomma. The kids already in Lakewood need space and the infrastructure isn't keeping up with the growth. Local kids should get space before people moving in. Rabbonim in the town need to band together to make sure the infrastructure can grow to match the rate of population growth. Normally I wouldn't throw this at the rabbonim, but in Lakewood, they really run the show so they need to own the problems also. Growing pains are painful but this problem is getting worse, not better.

About 10 years ago, one of the local schools was at absolute capacity. They had 3 spots left for kids in pre-k who didn't have siblings. What happened? New schools opened and balanced out the student to desk ratio. My town isn't growing like Lakewood is, but someone needs to figure out how to stop the madness.

LittleDucky

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 1:52 pm

At what point is someone considered a"local" for whom should be given priority for a seat in a school? If they lived there a year, two years before needing a spot? If the eldest was born there? If either the parents lived there as a child/single? If both parents were born there?

Lakewood should just set up a match system for schools. Parents rank their preferences and schools rank students. you get in to the highest matched school so long as space permits. Computerize it, take the drama out and don't let anyone figure out a "cheat". Medical schools figured it out with residencies.

debsey

Fri, Sep 23 2016, 2:35 pm

I keep hearing the term "giving priority to" in reference to the school admission bottleneck in lakewood. Don't people realize that if you're giving priority to someone, it's at the expense of someone else. Either way, no matter who gets "preference", someone is not getting in! Which means, if you move here, one way or another, a scant resource becomes more scarce. The only solution is to be part of the solution! Open a school or join up w a consortium of parents who are working on opening one. It doesn't make sense to just complain about it. No one is out to get anyone.

dietcokeaddict

Sat, Sep 24 2016, 9:02 pm

Just saw this thread and read all the comments on TLS.
I love when people say the administrators and principals will have to give a cheshbon for every kid they reject. If it's because of elitism, fine. But that's not usually the case. There's simply no room. I got my kid into a school in March, after the general acceptance process. And guess how many kids were still on that school's waiting list? 26! And I'm sure the bigger schools have bigger lists. The class I teach has 34 girls in it! 34! If the schools were to accept everyone who was a good fit (not even discussing matching hashkafos etc) there would easily be 40-50 kids in a class, sometimes more. That's not doing anyone a favor.
Many times the parents need to be more open-minded about which schools they would consider. Sometimes not.
Many times administrators and principals can act more kindly. Sometimes they already are acting with utmost mentchlechkeit.

But don't go blaming them and saying they should accept everyone so we won't have this problem.

cnc

Sat, Sep 24 2016, 10:30 pm

octopus wrote:

There is something very wrong with this whole picture. Every child is precious. Could you imagine the early bais yaakovs and yeshivas turning children away? Never! This whole business about certain schools being a "good fit" blah, blah, blah- we've created our own problems. This is why we are still in galus. Sorry, I'm making my general comment on your post, groisamomma. I'm not specifically picking on you. It just makes my blood boil when I see the turning away attitude. I was turned away from a certain bais yaakov (not in lakewood, in a different place) because my family did not belong to that town. Others were turned away for same reason and landed in public school and are not religious today.(my parents refused to put me in p.s.). There is an accounting to be had at the end of the day, and Hashem will exact punishment. I would not want to be the administrator that turned down children, and that kid had nowhere to go. And the administrator that says he still doesn't feel guilty after turning away kid that ended up dying? Um, even if a person didn't do something wrong, a good person will feel bad about that. Whats wrong with him??!!

Don't you think that if there are limited slots, the administrators have an achrayus first to people residing in that town?

octopus

Sat, Sep 24 2016, 10:40 pm

cnc wrote:

Don't you think that if there are limited slots, the administrators have an achrayus first to people residing in that town?

There was zero school in my town. The whole universe had no achrayis to me because of life circumstances and I lived where I lived? This is not tzedaka we are talking about. This is about educating jewish children.

cnc

Sat, Sep 24 2016, 11:03 pm

octopus wrote:

Right. But if there are only a certain amount of slots, why would they have MORE of an achrayus to out of towners than in towners? (Because if I understand correctly that is essentially what you are saying.)

Why should they make girls in their own city stay home or go out of town in order to accept an out of towner? How does that make sense?

octopus

Sat, Sep 24 2016, 11:34 pm

cnc wrote:

Did I say that a school has MORE of an achrayus to out of towners than in towners!? YOU are the one saying that a school has more of an achrayus to in-towners than -outies. The bottom line is, schools have an achrayus to children. Not to a zip code. I was trying to give perspective on how it feels to be rejected. And I posted under my own SN in doing so. If Lakewood is having such a big problem, year after year, they should put all their brilliant gemara kups together and think of something.

And not that it is the anonymous amother's business, but I shall respond to her as well. Opening up a school where there is almost no parent body- well, that's a bit difficult. And it's not your business why I lived where I lived. If you must know, while the BY was my parents first choice, yeshiva is still a yeshiva. I got accepted to a MO school that took me and my sibs with open arms, because who didn't want A+, well behaved students from a wonderful family. Eventually I did go to a BY. And I'm proud to be able to straddle different worlds and am comfortable with all different kinds of people, and they in turn, are comfortable with me.

amother

Cerise

Sun, Sep 25 2016, 12:01 am

Having just finished going through this process myself (my oldest started school this year) I usually side against the schools, but this story sounds like it's squarely the parents fault.

My child had a very hard time getting into a school not because we weren't the right type, but because this child was born with a health issue that no school wanted to deal with. We moved to Lakewood right after we got married, and we applied to many schools. It really killed me to watch out-of-towners get a spot before us. Bh we ended up sending to a very new school and we couldn't be more thrilled! The school is warm, attentive and eager to please.

After my difficult year, I blame anyone who moves from out of town just expecting to get in, and I blame them even more for insisting on only the best schools. You made your bed, now you'll have to sleep in it.