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Mostly Cloudy Another day, another lawsuit
Public school parents claim Orthodox conspiracy in Lawrence
By Michael Orbach
Issue of August 7, 2009 / 17 Av 5769
A federal judge Tuesday refused to temporarily block a Lawrence School Board consolidation plan that will close the Number Six School and bring all of the district's fifth graders into the Middle School.
With just a month before the beginning of the new school term, five parents, including Andrew Levey, a litigious former candidate for school board, brought a Federal civil rights lawsuit against the board that claims the consolidation plan and previous actions by the Lawrence Board of Education have violated the First Amendment separation between Church and State. It also alleges a wide-ranging conspiracy by the Orthodox Jewish community to promote Orthodox interests.
The lawsuit was filed at Federal Court in Central Islip on Tuesday afternoon. Although Judge Joanna Seybert denied the motion to block the consolidation plan from moving forward, another hearing is planned for August 18.
"The present board of education has elevated a single private religious denomination over the children they serve," Robert Agostisi, a lawyer for the parents, claimed in a court house conversation with a reporter. "They've eviscerated the separation between religion and state," he said.
The lawsuit claims that the primary effect of the consolidation plan is to “advance the Orthodox Jewish religion.”
"It doesn't even simply impinge the six board members, it implicates every Orthodox Jew in the neighborhood; it impinges every Orthodox Jew everywhere. We basically form a cabal," said Dr. Asher Mansdorf, a board member named in the suit. "It's almost that the people that were involved in the lawsuit have read the Protocols of [the Elders of] Zion and have pulled out individual pages and applied it to the Lawrence school district."
The lawsuit claims that the closing and potential sale of the Number Six School is motivated by a desire to lower property taxes in order to finance yeshiva tuition.
"Orthodox families tend to be large, and yeshiva tuition tends to be expensive," the lawsuit says. The document claims the school closing would be the "latest device used to direct public funds toward Orthodox interests."
Additionally, it claims that the consolidation plan and the actions of the Lawrence school board serve as a “disapproval of their [public school students] religious choices.”
An advertisement that appeared in the Five Towns Jewish Times in 2006 was among the evidence submitted by the parents. The ad was signed by 23 Orthodox rabbis in support of Orthodox candidates in that year's election, in which the Orthodox community won a majority on the board.
The lawsuit names the board and its trustees, both individually and in their official capacities.
By Michael Hatten's own count, this suit represents the third time the former board member has been sued for being a member of the Lawrence school board.
"This level of nastiness shouldn't be dignified with a response," he said.
School Board President Murray Forman said the result of the lawsuit and the need to defend against it would be to waste district funds that would have been better spent in the classroom.
Superintendent John Fitzsimons declined to comment but an attorney for the district, Albert D'Agostino, told The Jewish Star Tuesday afternoon that “The plaintiff's request [for an injunction to block the plan] was denied by their apparent lack of likelihood of success on their merits.”
“The judge does not think too highly of the lawsuit and their chances of winning,” said D'Agostino.
Agostisi, the lawyer for the parents, was adamant that his clients are not anti-Semitic.
"They don't care if [the board is] little green men from Mars, so long as they put the interest of the children first."
Mansdorf disagreed: "They are blatant bigots, by every definition of the word."
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