Keep Shulamith School Open

To:  Jewish Community

Shulamith School
Please don’t close our school!

Shulamith has been a pillar of the centrist Orthodox community in Brooklyn for decades and has many thousands of distinguished graduates who form the backbone of Jewish communities throughout greater New York, America, and Eretz Yisrael. Shulamith School has always maintained an outstanding reputation and has set the standard in the field of Jewish education. It currently has 500 students enrolled from Nursery through High School.

The administration of Shulamith School has decided that Shulamith School of Brooklyn is no longer viable and will have to sell its building and move to smaller quarters or close completely. The monies of the sale of the building, over $20 million, are to be used to build a new state of the art facility for a separate branch of Shulamith in Long Island which also has 500 students.

It is difficult to believe that any school with 500 students is failing, especially if community support is rallied to maintain it.

Equity and Fairness to the Brooklyn Community: For decades, the parents and community members have worked to build the Shulamith School to educate their daughters in Brooklyn. This has included donating substantial sums of money to build and maintain buildings and raise operating funds to provide scholarships for those who cannot afford tuition.

While it is admirable to offer a Shulamith education to the Long Island community, we must ensure that we don’t destroy our own in the process. Millions of dollars from our Brooklyn campus have been funneled to Long Island to help establish their school. This includes: purchase of building, construction, salaries, advertising, rent, mortgages, lines of credit and more. This venture has depleted all liquid assets and created a financial burden on our institution. Long Island is a different community with their own fundraising obligations. These are our community resources that need to stay in Brooklyn.

The Long Island school also deserves the ability to grow and promote itself. It is unfair to them that their efforts to move forward are being hindered by the decisions of the current Board. The Long Island parents want to fundraise and to build but their actions are being rebuffed. Their children are being quartered in facilities that are simply inadequate. A new Board is needed that has the best interests of all of our children in mind.
We condemn this effort by the current administration of Shulamith. We understand that this is a great moral challenge for the administration. Yes, $20 million is a large sum of money, but we expect our leaders to be “anshei shem” and “sonei batzah.” We do not expect them to put a price tag on our children’s education. To put it plainly: it is ethically, morally and Halachically wrong to pull a school out from under 500 children while they are still learning. This is a community institution, not a privately owned business seeking profit.

Call to Action. We, the undersigned, urge the Board of Shulamith and its executive director to step down so that a new Board can be elected that will preserve, manage, and grow the school in Brooklyn, while at the same time help Bnot Shulamith grow and flourish. For those of us who are parents or members we hereby give our proxy to vote at any meeting of the members of the Shulamith School for Girls to Sherry Mizman so that we can help transition to a new administration.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Keep Shulamith School Open Petition to Jewish Community was created by and written by E Leibowitz (GoldieStern@yahoo.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.