Three Shulamith board members join parents' lawsuit

Court asked to void Inwood purchase and Five Towns rental agreements

Issue of August 1, 2008

Affidavits by a former chairman of the board and two former presidents of Shulamith School for Girls contradict the school’s claim that a board election was held last year, and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the current board.

Reached at his Brooklyn office on Monday evening, Rabbi Moshe Zwick, the executive director, declined to answer any questions about the statements by Arthur Schick, Richard Jacobs and Herbert Knobel.

The three men are joining a legal action by a group of parents at the Flatbush school, which the parents hope will block the transfer of proceeds from the sale of the Flatbush campus to Bnot Shulamith of Long Island. The Shulamith School has entered into a contract to purchase a new campus in Inwood for Bnot Shulamith.

The group of parents is pursuing a dual legal strategy. Hearings in New York State Supreme Court and the Beth Din of America were both scheduled for Wednesday, after The Jewish Star’s deadline.

In a filing for New York State Supreme Court, the parents asked that the court “declare null and void” all rental and purchase agreements entered into by Shulamith absent a quorum of properly elected board members.

They also requested an immediate hearing into whether parents were being “improperly coerced, blackmailed, or extorted into discontinuing their claim, by Rabbi Moshe Zwick, through the threat of withholding tuition reductions or payment schedules.”

In off the record conversations with The Jewish Star, several parents who are listed on the legal papers recounted phone calls or face to face conversations with school officials, including an administrator, strongly urging them to remove themselves from the legal case.

In his affidavit, former President Arthur Schick said he voted to sell the Flatbush campus, and to purchase a new one on Long Island for Bnot Shulamith, but he called it “nothing short of outrageous” to leave Shulamith in Flatbush “without a campus and without the funds to acquire” one.

“It is patently unfair that the Long Island facility be established with the assets cannibalized from Flatbush without any fundraising or without the Long Island school having to take out a mortgage on its building,” he added.

Schick described a board meeting that turned ugly after he objected that the planned transaction would leave nothing “for the continuation of Shulamith in Brooklyn” where 500 students are currently enrolled.

The school’s contention that “to the extent by-laws exist,” they have never been used or applied by the board “is nonsense,” according to Richard Jacobs. During his term as president, between 1981 and 1986, new bylaws were adopted, he said. While he doesn’t have a copy of the bylaws, Jacobs said, he does recall certain provisions, including a four-year presidential term limit, that the board is required to have regular meetings and that the school is required to remain in Brooklyn.

After 1990, Herbert Knobel said in his affidavit, “a strange shift developed in Shulamith.” The school had previously been run by a “very active and involved board,” he said, but “Rabbi Zwick, who as executive director is a mere employee of the school, serving at the pleasure of the board, began to make more and more policy decisions.”

“For the past 10 years or so the school basically trundled along on autopilot, being run by Rabbi Zwick,” Schick concurred.

Knobel said he has not received notice of a board meeting since around 1990, after he disagreed with a policy enacted by Rabbi Zwick “not to allow girls who had attended a co-ed summer camp to attend Shulamith.” Nonetheless, he noted, his name continued to be listed on the roster of officers and board members “as recently as the 2007 and 2008 dinner journals.”

Jacobs said he “was aware of no meetings at all” since 1998, until 2007 when the issue of selling the Flatbush campus was raised. Jacobs and Knobel both said that “there was never an election” in which the current president, Sam Gross, was elected. Gross has been in office for 10 years. His predecessor, Henoch Morgenstern, held the office for eight years.

In their statements, all three men said, “I do not agree that the current purported board is legitimate.”

The parents group is reiterating its claim that the Flatbush school is being deliberately mismanaged.

In an affidavit, Julian Seewald, a Flatbush resident, and one-time Shulamith Parent of the Year honoree, said that in recent years the school has stopped soliciting him, despite having made a number of substantial contributions in the past, and paying full tuition during his daughter’s 14 years in the school.

“I am concerned that the decision to wind down Shulamith in Brooklyn was actually decided years ago, and as a result the administration decided not to work at recruitment and fundraising,” said Seewald.

Saying that he is “deeply disturbed” that Shulamith would no longer be present in Brooklyn, Seewald also said that “my daughter had a terrific experience at Shulamith and I will be forever grateful.”