Editorial: Success is showing up

Issue of April 30, 2010/ 16 Iyar, 5770

Not all of the people who live in the Lawrence school district are necessarily in strict agreement with one another about how stupendously lucky they are to live there under the current school board. Suffice to say that differences of opinion exist. However, if one were to look at that question strictly from the perspective of a taxpayer, the residents of District 15 are fortunate, indeed.

That’s because tax levy increases in District 15 have been close to zero for the last four years. This in a district that subsisted on austerity budgets for several years previous, after fed-up voters nixed successive school spending plans.

Compare this to the Hewlett-Woodmere district next door. In District 14 school taxes have nearly doubled in recent years and the upward trajectory shows no sign of slowing.

Eleven months ago two homes located across the street from one another in Nassau County were assessed at $654,000 each. One home sits in District 14, the other in District 15. Last year’s tax bill on the former was $12,338 — that’s the Hewlett-Woodmere district — while the tax bill on the latter, in the Lawrence district, was just $5687.

Property taxes are not the whole story of a district’s performance, of course. No matter how great the concern over dollars and cents, it is still more important to be certain that students are being given every advantage. That will always be the case. Luckily, there is every indication that the quality of education in District 15 remains very high indeed.

Therefore, we remind voters in District 15 who are concerned with their property tax bills to circle May 11 on their kitchen calendars, to mark it in their day planners and highlight it in their electronic schedules.

May 11 is the date of the school board election in the Lawrence School District — a week earlier than districts elsewhere, on account of a conflict with Erev Shavuot — and voting is vital.

With that in mind, we’ll take this opportunity to make another point.

Woody Allen once said, “80 percent of success is just showing up.”

Being a member of the school board in District 15 has not been easy in recent years. At risk of being accused of moral equivalency, which we do not intend or condone, it is fair to say that officials on both sides of the aisle (the aisle in this case runs between public school and private school parents) have been criticized, vilified, threatened and downright hated. If there’s any ego involved in such work it would have to be related to a perculiar form of masochism. Therefore, we respectfully suggest that a way to demonstrate gratitude to elected officials and would-be elected officials alike, would be to show up when the opportunity presents itself.

School board meetings would come under this heading. And this week, an observer at the Meet the Candidate Night noted that there were virtually no identifably Orthodox men (read: yarmulkas) in the crowd. It’s not easy to get out on a work night, but we all do so anyway for all sorts of reasons. Even if you already have every intention of voting, and already know exactly for whom you intend to vote, showing up to an event like that to lend moral support to people working on all of our behalf — to applaud or even smile, where appropriate, would be a nice thing to do.

We’re just saying.