When I heard that there was going to be a ceremony honoring Lawrence Gross and Don Ashkenase, the two longest serving members of the Great Neck School Board in its history, I had an anxiety attack. Normally, such public displays are held when people step down, or worse, when they are no longer around to hear the expressions of gratitude and admiration.
But this was different. Board President Barbara Berkowitz just felt that the time was right that the milestones of having completed 32 and 31 years on the board, so selflessly and tirelessly, to make our public schools the best they can be, should not go unnoticed.
And this was a particularly difficult year, after several difficult budget years.
The two form the board’s finance committee, and each year I have marveled how they continue to pull a rabbit out of a shrinking hat in keeping tax increases as low as possible in face of the mandates and absurd demands placed on public schools ( but not, mind you, on charter schools, private schools or parochial schools).
This year (obviously, working with the administration and other board members), they managed to keep the tax increase to 1.99 percent – under the 2 percent cap that was not in place but was about to be put into place by New York State – while holding fast to the core principles which make Great Neck public schools among the best in the country, with small class size being the key one.
That has not been the case in public school districts around the country, which have seen everything cut but the mandated, high-stakes curriculum in English and math, with almost all resources being pushed into the subjects of the make-or-break tests. Communities around the country are resorting to auctions – I mean high-priced auctions – in order to raise money if they want to keep music, art, sports programs, sell commercial advertising on their fields, and basically prostitute themselves in order to provide what used to be considered “a public good” or “the commons.”
That’s why I lost it at the Kings Point Civic Association meeting, June 15, when Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos, himself a Great Neck resident who said his kids went through Great Neck public schools 20 years ago. He embraced the anger from the smattering of residents who turned out, furious (as usual) over paying taxes (these are Kings Point residents, mind you, who you would think make a choice to live in one of the most expensive zip codes in the country), and they centered in on high school taxes that are still the bulk of their property tax. This is especially intense when homeowners no longer have children in the schools – they were grateful to have their “tuition” subsidized by other taxpayers while their kids were in school but now that they no longer have kids in school, they don’t want to subsidize anyone else. The complaint was always the same: school taxes are rising, when property values and salaries are shrinking.
It is frustrating to hear the anger that comes from ignorance of people who have never attended a school board meeting, let alone a budget meeting to see how the budget is created or the fiscal vise that public school districts are put in (and the fact that while New York City gets half of its school budget subsidized from New York State, which are our tax dollars, Great Neck gets less than 5 percent of its budget from state aid, and don’t get me started on the shift in base proportion of taxes, shifting the burden from commercial to residential properties).
But what infuriated me was when Maragos, who works with numbers and should know better, made the remark that 20 years ago, when his kid attended Great Neck South, it was ranked No. 1 in the nation. It isn’t Number One anymore (something like sixth, I think he said), which proves that spending more money on schools does not make them better.
He thought it was a great idea that New York City has one chancellor for 1.1 million kids, when Nassau County has 50 superintendents. He neglects to mention, though that New York City may have one school chancellor but it has multiple deputies, dozens of vice-chancellors, 38 school districts (each with a superintendent), and a budget of $21 billion (half of which is paid for by New York State taxpayers, including us). That works out to about $20,000 per student.
What is it about New York City school results that you think is admirable? Do you want New York City’s drop-out rate, low reading scores, pathetic science scores? Do you want less than half of eight graders “proficient” in reading?
Maragos’ remark was straight out of the Republican right-wing, Cato Institute playbook (the notion that quality of education is not reflected in the amount spent, unlike military spending) and was one of the most ridiculous comparisons I have ever heard. If he had said that Great Neck’s graduation rates plummeted, that Great Neck students are not hitting the “mastery” level on those all-important tests in comparison to the best schools in the country, he might have a point, but you would still look deeper to who the children were – the fact that even 20 years ago, 65 percent of the students at Baker School came from families where English was not a first language (I remember that from my son’s time there).
To base a statement on students of 20 years ago compared to the rest of the country, is utterly absurd and actually irresponsible. But Maragos’ intent was to feed red meat to lions.
His comment strikes to the heart of what is wrong with the conservative [privatize public] education policy: the notion that students are widgets, and if there is something wrong with “quality control” and it doesn’t come out of the plant properly, it is the fault of the assembly operator (teachers).
But Gross and Ashkenase came on to the school board in just such an atmosphere. They were motivated to come on when, in a similar austerity period, in the early 1980s (the Reagan years), the board decided it was better to close and consolidate schools and increase class size than to spend money on insuring that Maragos’ kids could get the best public education they could.
That’s when Kensington-Johnson, Grace Avenue, Cherry Hill, Cloverdale, and Cuttermill schools were shuttered.
That split the community. Gross recalled marching up Middle Neck Road to protest the school closings.
Gross, who joined in 1981, and Ashkenase who came in 1982, came on the board and mounted a bit of a revolution. The board replaced the superintendent with Dr. William Shine, and together, the new board and new superintendent refocused our Great Neck schools on the foundation that small class size, individualized attention, a child-centered approach to teaching, were the ingredients to helping each child fulfill their full potential.
The new board, which was joined by Mona Fuchs in 1983, also changed the entire way of doing business – with a philosophy of “government under glass” and total transparency and participation with the community – something that clearly has not been the case in the Village of Kings Point where the residents, in addition to being angry at their taxes, were really furious at what they perceived was government behind closed doors.
Over the years, Gross, Ashkenase and Fuchs were joined by Judi Bosworth, Barbara Berkowitz, Fran Langsner and Susan Healy, and working with the superintendents who followed Dr. Shine – Ronald Friedman and Tom Dolan – have been able to work their magic.
People make a difference.
Bobbie Zeller was in that fight, too, marching then for a better public education, just as she did for civil rights, for peace, for social justice, for environmental justice.
She was part of that generation that came to Great Neck and built the institutions and the facilities – Parkwood complex, the Main Library and branches – that we most treasure, that people move to Great Neck for, and yet take for granted.
Sadly, she passed away last week and did not get to hear the expressions of gratitude and praise.
Her longtime friend and fellow progressive activist Naomi Feldheim, wrote: “Where do I begin to write to you about my friend of almost 45 years, whom I loved for her passionate commitment, but for her love for family and friends as well? We shared so many moments of personal and historic defeats and victories. Many years ago, I chaired the Great Neck Committee for Human Rights, and that’s how we met.
“When my daughter, Deborah was born, Irwin Landes was running for the state Assembly and we worked on his campaign in a tiny office above a store on Middle Neck Road, with Deborah in an infant seat on the table. This created an unbreakable bond. We worked on school board campaigns, on saving Kensington Johnson, on committees to keep Great Neck great. Bobbie also became president of American Jewish Congress for a term, and this was to fulfill a commitment to Interfaith alliances. She was committed to fairness and justice and to separation of church and state.
“We went to Washington together, to Albany to local politician’s offices, to meetings, and then, when I had to go back to work and played a role in NYSUT and GNTA, and could no longer attend to all the community affairs, Bobbie gathered other community leaders from all her years of political action and formed with them Reach Out America to continue to work toward the goals we shared.
“Bobbie led the church-state committee of ROA and spearheaded a glorious seminar at Hofstra that covered the effects of the violation of the separation in science, law and education.
“She discovered Mikey Weinstein, who was working as the leader of a foundation of his creation, Military and Religious Freedom Foundation. She brought him to Great Neck to deliver his message. Her aim was to gather support for his work. When we found that Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act was being used as a sword and not as a shield, we attended BZA meetings, organized meetings at the county, the village officials association, at village halls, in Washington with Congressional representatives, at the Great Neck Library for our community.
“She also worked tirelessly for the renovation of the library.
“She was a radiant being inside and out and we will feel the pain of her loss, but she left us a legacy that we cherish, and we will all try to continue to work to realize her dreams for a better world,” said Naomi.
One of the speakers at the funeral was state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, the longtime state Assemblyman for our district.
“Bobbie was a mainstay in progressive causes, certainly of late with her helping to found Reach Out America. She was particularly strong on separation of church and state concerns. She was an active Democrat, having served as a member of the Nassau Democratic Committee for many years and in the Reform Democratic Association and the Great Neck Democratic Club. She was a key organizer in May Newburger’s Assembly campaigns and very active in my campaigns as well. She was beloved, admired and respected for her integrity and dedication. We will all miss Bobbie.”
Fran Reid, who also was a co-founder of Reach Out America, said, “I wouldn’t be the person I am today without Bobbie. The funny thing is every person I talked to at her funeral said the same thing. That was the power of Bobbie. She was an inspiration, passionate, funny, infuriating, fashionable, everyone’s mother & grandmother & for me – I was Lucy and she was Ethel. Her home was the hub for meetings, flyers, phoning and cocktails.”
One of my favorite memories of Bobbie was arriving at the start of the first protest against the Iraq War, March 23, 2003, four days after Bush launched his pre-emptive invasion. We were with Great Neck Sane, and as we ascended out of Penn Station onto the Manhattan streets, Bobbie, a veteran of the anti-Vietnam marches, said, “It’s as if all I had fought for my whole life has been undone.”
And then she hoisted her sign and started marching.
She was the veteran of many, many marches. And left very, very big shoes (and heart) to fill.
Barbara Zeller was our Teddy Kennedy, our lion of progressivism, with the strength, courage, conviction and commitment to fight the battles year in and year out.
And I never got to tell her: You are my hero.
