On Long Island, Tuesday's election for the Lawrence, New York school board has turned into a bitter contest being fought along religious lines according to an article in yesterday's Newsday. At issue is whether control of the 7-member school board will remain in the hands of Orthodox Jewish candidates representing parents who send their children to private religious schools. 3,380 students attend Lawrence public schools, but another 3,900 students in the district attend private religious schools, largely yeshivas. In recent years, families of private school students have sought more services from the school district for their children.
In the election, 3 "public school candidates" are facing three candidates sympathetic to parents of private school students. Ads placed in the local newspaper with headlines like "Should the Lawrence Public School District Be Run By An Orthodox Majority?" have been strongly criticized, and have led the editors of the Herald newspapers to run an explanation of why they accepted the ads. Public-school candidate Pamela Greenbaum says that ads have run in Jewish publications seeking to hire people to help drum up absentee votes from school district residents with dual-citizenship now living in Israel.
