A Different Lawrence Proposal: Revolutionizing American Jewish Education?
The Lawrence proposal to get Orthodox private-school kids into public schools with a supplementary Jewish education could take on a massively different shape. While the original proposal faced potential legal problems and questions from the Orthodox community about assimilation, the new program being outlined by Jonathan Isler would look to get past both by creating a partnership amongst the private schools and public schools, in which the secular portion of the private schools’ curriculum would be effectively cancelled.
Isler is planning to propose the plan at a meeting with the Lawrence school board tomorrow. The rough outline: “Have the kids picked up in the morning…go to yeshiva…davening in the morning, their religious instruction in the morning, runs to 11:15…[lunch]…at 12 o’clock, they would be bused…for public school until 4 o’clock.” That would effectively “tack on another period at the end of the day.”
The main hitches? Whether the school board would allow whatever curriculum and schedule adjustments would be involved, and whether the teachers’ union (which was, Isler claims, highly enthusiastic about the original proposal) would sign on to the extra period.
Isler outlines the main benefits of the proposal as being that they would still allow for the private schools to function, and keep that level of Jewish education in place, while the separate track within the public school would likely mean that the students would be in an almost-exclusively Orthodox environment.
The new proposal developed, Isler said, after community rabbis urged him to negotiate with private schools instead of developing a plan without them; he said that a member of the HAFTR board has agreed to take a proposal to the rest of the board if Isler succeeds with his proposal to the public school board.
His plan, he said, “could not only revolutionize the way kids are taught in district 15, it could serve as a model for the country.” Indeed, if he succeeds in getting this past the private school, public school, communal, and legal barriers, it’s quite likely it would serve as such.
I don’t know what the NYCLU would have to say about such a program, and won’t ask unless Isler succeeds in tomorrow’s meeting. If he does succeed, the plan would no longer be to implement a change for the next school year, but to spend a calendar year developing the program for the ‘06-’07 school year and beyond.
One major reason for the change in plan is the overwhelming response that Isler and co-planner Kenny Gluck have received. Where, previously, they’d estimated that perhaps a few dozen students might join the program, they feel that the interested quantity is now in the hundreds, and that with private school participation, they could have as many as a thousand students in the program.
July 12th, 2005 at 11:26 am
Why do it in that order? This isn’t so original, but why not go to public school in the morning like everyone else, and have their religious instruction after school?
July 12th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
I was wondering when the Orthodox establishment would realize that tuition is crushing the average parent.
July 12th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Some of the most important but also most subtle religious influences on Jewish students in school is from the secular studies faculty. In my own experience, I had a rabbi teaching me AP Math and Physics in twelfth grade and an Orthodox tenth grade Chemistry teacher who impressed upon me not only that science does not contradict religion but that fully Orthodox Jews can be knowledgable and worldly.
The proposal discussed in this post is anti-Torah u-Madda and the ideals of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. The message it sends to the students is that Torah is for the Jews and everything else for non-Jews. Those who strive for some sort of integration of religion and the world, in the many different versions currently circulating, should be opposed to this proposal. The ideal is to have Orthodox Jews teaching all subjects so that the teachers can be role models to students on how to integrate everything one learns into one’s life and worldview. Instead, this proposal will have students studying religious subjects under rabbis in the morning and then entering a different universe, one legally mandated to be secular, in which the rest of the world is explored. It is spiritually dangerous and ideologically unsound.
The need for affordable schooling is very real. However, we need to abadndon this potentially disastrous plan and focus our considerably creativity and energy on one that is more sound.
July 13th, 2005 at 10:24 am
BZ — The apparent answers to your question are twofold: For one thing, they don’t want an hour or two of Jewish education tacked on at the end of the day, they want a full half-day; for the other, they feel that getting a separate schedule track will assist them in keeping Orthodox students, for the most part, separate from other students.
July 13th, 2005 at 2:05 pm
The remarkable Lawrence Proposal will appeal to only a limited number of observant families. It has long been recognized that unless my kids are attending Maimonidies in Boston (or similar), my tuition dollars are funding socialization more so than education (marginally speaking). Many observant parents might welcome the cheaper education under this proposal but bemoan the socialization.
It is astounding that there are no other concrete proposals out there to mitigate against the tuition burden. I don’t consider what Marvin Schick has written (paradigm shift wherein the “community” redirects charity dollars to schools, see his blog) to be a concrete proposal - it is more of a suggestion or wish, akin to suggesting that we all stop talking lashon hara - a worthy but unrealistic goal.
As with the Lawrence Proposal, any worthwhile change will come from the grassroots, i.e., people who actually have to pay the money in question. Personally, I would rather see financial change come from within the existing schools. And here I expect those schools that are owned and operated by communities - as opposed to individuals - to produce favorable results.
July 14th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
I have a question about the Lawrence proposal. All of the schools in the Five Towns have a great deal of enrollment from students who reside outside of the LPS district. Asuming that the deal goes through, I doubt that the district will have any interest in educating these students. This will leave the yeshivot a choice of either running an English department anyway, or turning away a great deal of their enrollment.
July 14th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
mrmoose — Your question is more relevant to the third proposal, and Isler says there that he doesn’t have a lot of answers, because he hasn’t put much thought into that question; a partnership of school districts (including NYC) to provide teachers does, indeed, seem highly unlikely.
Under this second proposal, they would still have to negotiate with a series of home districts, but the students would only be taught at their home public schools.
July 15th, 2005 at 12:09 am
By the grace of G-d
Shalom uBrocha!
I saw such proposal discussed in the Rebbe’s letters in English as part of a choice between two proposals the 2nd being that Jewish school rents out it’s building to the public school for $1 a year and the public school teachers come to teach there in the afternoon. The Rebbe explains there in 5 pages why the 1st proposal makes no sense. When I find the letter I’ll post more info.
Brocha veHatzlocha!
Ariel Sokolovsky
PS. I also tend to agree with Gil’s sentiments quoted above as a better alternative to either one of this options.
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Long Live our Master our Teacher and our Rebbe King Moshiach Forever and Ever!