NEW YORK – The New York Civil Liberties Union Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal district court challenging the at-large method by which school board members of the East Ramapo Central School District are elected.
By voting at-large instead by wards, black and Latino residents are being effectively disenfranchised, allowing white residents to “hijack the school board in service of lily-white private schools,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman.
The suit seeks to have school board members voted on by wards to make the board more representative of the community.
Shannon Wong, the director of the Lower Hudson Valley Chapter of the NYCLU, said at-large voting has produced negative effects.
“We have seen over time an incredible decline in services to public school students,” Wong said. “They have cut their kindergarten to half a day. There were over 400 cuts to staff, 200 of them being teaching positions and generally the school district has declined greatly.”
The lawsuit alleged that at-large voting violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color or minority status.
The adjacent Ramapo Central School District has changed its name to the Suffern Central School District to distance itself from its troubled neighbor, the NYCLU says.
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