It was 1910. He had just fulfilled a lifelong dream. Following the same path as the other 484,000 Russian and Eastern European immigrants that year, he stepped off a transatlantic steamer onto a ramp leading to Ellis Island. His last name was Moskowitz and he was my grandfather.
Someone at immigration may have just given him that name because he had arrived from Moscow. Or, maybe it was just another example of the prevalent anti-Semitic ridicule he was accustomed to. Who knows? He certainly was not going to let something like that stop him now.
Poor, illiterate, and uneducated, he didn’t seem to have much going for him. Not more than five-feet -our-inches tall, this tough Russian immigrant was not an imposing-looking figure at all. But if you met him, you sensed right away that he was someone you just didn’t want to mess with.
In Brooklyn’s Crown Heights he was finally able to practice his own religion and somehow he managed to open his own barbershop. Both were only a wishful dream in czarist Russia. Discretely hidden in a back-room, behind locked doors, he ran the local gambling establishment, a landmark on Schenectady Ave.
During the 1940’s and 1950’s this was also a regular meeting place for many of the local Jewish and Italian neighborhood characters. Meyer Lansky he wasn’t. But he found out fast enough that in his new country hard work and ingenuity were his passport out of poverty.
He was also our first “Morris” in America since “Morris” was his children’s new Americanized name. He would do anything to prove that he was an American.
But, for “da kinder,, his children and grandchildren, it was all about education, specifically public school education.
My father was the first to go to college, “City College”, of course. What an honor. For me, it was Stuyvesant High School and Queens College, For everyone living on Montgomery Street, a public school education was the only available pathway out of the neighborhood .
But sometimes, that just isn’t enough. Let me ask a question. What would you do if your child was placed in a neighborhood public school where there was absolutely no chance for him to succeed? Let’s say that this school had inferior teachers, the facilities were dilapidated, it was unsafe, drugs and gangs were prevalent, and the drop-out rate was ridiculously high? You would protect your child by getting him out, right? But what if you didn’t have the money or the connections to do that?
Eleven-year-old Gabriel Evens and his family, live in New Orleans, Louisiana and he was scheduled to attend one of those “failing schools.” But now, there was an alternative for students like Gabriel, a pathway out of poverty.
Gov. Jindal’s new school-voucher program allows any student in Louisiana, who is living under the poverty level, and who is attending one of those failing schools, to get a state subsidized, school voucher. The student could then transfer out of any school that the state ranks C, D, or F and can then attend any public or private school. Way to go governor.
I must point out that we are talking about one of our most celebrated American cities. New Orleans is a historical landmark, a major port and an international tourist destination. Its resilient residents have survived numerous natural catastrophes. It is the home of country music, football champions. the Mardi Gras and great universities. So it’s unbelievable to me that the following situation actually exists there.
According to the State of Louisiana, 953 of Louisiana’s 1,373 public schools (K-12) were ranked C, D, or F. That’s 953 out of 1,373. That’s a national disgrace.
So what does Gabriel’s mother do when her son is scheduled to attend one of those violence-plagued, academically-failing, local public schools? She did what my grandpa Moskowitz would have done and she got him the heck out of there. She accepted the $4,315 New Orleans school voucher and then, following state regulations, she legally registered her son in an academically successful Catholic school.
Last month, the Louisiana Teacher’s Union sued the state of Louisiana to force Gabriel to immediately return him to his previously failing school.
What’s their reasoning? The Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the Louisiana Federation of Educators claim that the voucher system “steals” money from the public schools even if the school is a total failure.
But to the poor children of New Orleans, it’s their only hope to better themselves. Unfortunately, it turns out to be yet another example of the public school teachers unions putting their own money, jobs, and power ahead of their student’s education.
Why should any student, just because he or she is poor, be forced to attend a failing school? Do you think a child from a well-to-do family would allow that? Why doesn’t the teachers union indorse a plan to close these failing schools, and reopen them when improvements are made? We did that in New York City.
The unions are also ignoring the fact that their state constitution legally allows the districts (parishes) to spend their state education funds in any school they wish, public or private and that these state-sponsored scholarship vouchers are only given to impoverished students in these failing schools.
Amazing situation, isn’t it? An entitlement program that actually works to improve a child’s education, and the teachers union is against it.
Dr. Stephen Morris
North Hills
