Lauds column on public schools - The Jewish Standard

Kudos to Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer for his April 30 column. Cool, compassionate, bolstered by unquestionable authority, he states the case for not wreaking vengeance on the public school system by voting down budgets to keep property taxes low. His logic is irrefutable: Denying necessary funds for community operations means community neglect, deteriorating public services, and lower property values. As a retired teacher (in both public school and Jewish day school), I know the problems of both and I sympathize. But the answer does not lie with savagely and mindlessly restricting local budgets. It needs to look to national priorities, to effect a rearrangement of them. And the public needs to shake itself out of its lethargy and make itself heard on these issues -otherwise the local inequities will continue to be the same old, same old.

In the meantime, Rabbi Engelmayer’s contribution to civilized discourse is never bombastic, always irrefutably logical, and always with penetrating insight.

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