The school is called SCHI, or School for Children with HIdden Intelligence. (Ignore the faces of color you see on the site; that's part of the charade.) The founder and current director is Rabbi Osher Eisemann. According to the Asbury Park Press, he has been charged with:
Theft by unlawful taking; misapplication of government property; misconduct by a corporate official; and money laundering — all second-degree offenses that carry up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $150,000, state Attorney General Christopher Porrino said in a statement.Eisemann’s method was simple: he overcharged Lakewood Public Schools by about a million dollars by paying for uncertified teachers, overpaying administrators, and proffering receipts for items that don’t seem to exist (ex: an expensive generator for SCHI’s summer camp that no one could find). Then he gave the money to the school’ s fundraising foundation, the non-profit Services for Hidden Intelligence, LLC, and used the money for purchases unrelated to SCHI.
This shande far di kinde (Yiddish for “scandal for the children”) barely qualifies as the tip of the um, iceberg regarding the school’s illicit behavior.
Lakewood is complicated: the public district’s 5,000 students are Latino, Black, and largely poor. Student outcomes are grim. This is largely due to the lack of funds available to public school students because the district spends over $18 million of its $128 million operating budget to bus 25,000 kids to over 100 Jewish day schools (the transportation is managed by an unaccountable consortium) and another $22 million to SCHI for providing what is supposed to be a secular education to 200 Jewish special needs children. (Contrary to statements by the omnipresent legal eagle Michael Inzelbuch, “most if not all of [SCHI’s students] are Orthodox.”) That leaves only $13,236 per pupil for public school non-Jewish students, well below what N.J. considers “adequacy.”
In a letter last month to the community, Lakewood Superintendent Laura Winters wrote,
It is with great sadness that I must inform you that the Lakewood School District is unable to provide its students with a “thorough and efficient” education required by the New Jersey State Constitution. The level of education that will be offered to the students of the Lakewood School District in the 2017-2018 school year, is in my professional opinion, tragically inadequate and inferior compared to the education offered to those students in wealthier towns in Ocean County and across the state.SCHI's “palatial” grounds were raided by the FBI last June for exploiting the federal E-rate program. Last April Lakewood U.N.I.T.E., which represents Black students, filed a civil rights complaint against the school district for "disparate treatment of minority students" in special-education placements.
Annual tuition at SCHI is listed as $97,000 per student, but usually approaches about $125,000 to cover extra services.
But the school board is controlled by Orthodox Jews and so is the town. The State DOE sent in a fiscal monitor, MIchael Azzara, several years ago and he regularly overrules the Board. But there are limits on what he can do.
This disparate treatment is old news. SCHI’s duplicity is old news. Lakewood School Board’s disregard for Black and Latino students is old news. It’s time for something new. How about a state takeover?
Old news is like old people. It passes with time. The part that is missing is not statutory crime, it's blatant and arrogant violation of Constitutional law. SCHI is and has been guilty of prejudicial discrimination. If we go back 50 years to the heart of the Civil Rights movement, we will hear the words "de facto discrimination". Because SCHI has 99% Orthodox enrollment and is funded with tax dollars meant for "all" eligible Lakewood students, it is and has been guilty of "de facto prejudicial discrimination" and "it" should taken over by the State. It is time for the gaming the system to end.
ReplyDeleteIt appears you are getting most if not all your information on this from the Asbury Park Press.
ReplyDelete1. Where did you learn that the reason the FBI raided SCHI had anything to do with ERATE? (perhaps you are confusing 2 different articles on APP)
2. SCHI's founder is accused of essentially taking money from the school which he immediately paid back from the foundation. (non taxpayer money) Maybe there is an innocent explanation as to using the wrong bank account etc. We were not not shown, at least in the news a pattern of abuse at SCHI by its founder.
3. It does appear that SCHI is an expensive school, but there are several special education schools in NJ that are in this range or higher. I dont see a pattern of Major spending abuse or fraud by SCHI.
3. We still don't know why the FBI raided in the first place.
4. SCHI has been consistently targeted by the press, mostly the APP for decades. A scroll through many articles involving Ocean County or Lakewood show that most of the local articles are slanted against the Jewish community and the comments are virulently anti Semitic.
5. Lakewood TWP and School funding have structural issues that are related to the NJ school funding formula that are the genesis of all Lakewood's problems. You have a lot (25,000?) private school children. Yes they are Jewish. And you have small amount of public school children (5,000?)
However, much of the State funds that are provided to the district are tied to the number of public school students. Thus Lakewood receives base funding like that of a small district, when in fact they are a large district. This would be fine if the Jewish private school community had a zero financial footprint. In fact they utilize a relatively small amount of money. Bussing and special education expenditure together average out to around 2,000 per student per year, still far less then the 13,000 and change for the public school students.
My math may be a little off for lack of more precise information, but I think that is the ballpark.
If the Ocean County, indeed if the NJ community would empathize more with this problem and try to help with solutions that are structural and meaningful instead of trying to cut more and more services to either the public or private school community this would actually help.
Tell me how the Anti Semitic undertones from the APP have served this community? Has anyone Jewish or Non Jewish, Public or Privately schooled, benefited from this senseless blame game?
The realities are that Both communities are being terribly short changed, and the fanning of anti Semitic comments from Tabloid media has contributed to the discordant atmosphere.
This is a school policy blog. We expect more meaningful analysis rather than just copy paste rhetoric from the APP.