Superintendent Gary Schall
By Larry Gordon
We sat around a long, imposing conference table in what used to be the Lawrence School District superintendent’s office. I thought the room looked familiar, as I have attended quite a few meetings with past chief officers of the District 15 schools. The move to a smaller, less opulent office is a reflection on the sincere, down-to-earth approach to managing this unique education district here on this western sliver of the county.
The person at the helm is Gary Schall, a soft-spoken but passionate individual when it comes to dispensing education and indeed a direction for future life for the 8,000-plus students in his charge.
This district is distinctive (there is only one other like it in New York State) in that a majority of the resident students attend yeshivas or other private schools, as opposed to almost all other districts, which essentially govern the public-school system in their communities.
So we sat around that table for a while, talking about how things used to be and the struggle, which was eventually successful, to bring educational peace and harmony to this part of New York. It took a long time to turn that corner, and during the struggle there were many who thought this day would probably never come. But it did. And it did so through the perseverance of more than a few, including those like Mr. Schall and school-board leaders like Dr. Asher Mansdorf, Murray Forman, and Dr. David Sussman.
There were a few years there—years that coincided with the creation of this publication 15 years ago—when we were all vilified and accused of trying to orchestrate an Orthodox Jewish takeover of the schools and the district. That idea is as humorous today as the accusations were back then.
Now, all these years and experiences later, people on both sides of what was once a serious divide can look back at the sterling accomplishments of the district and conclude that all those tense and friction-filled years were just some sort of misunderstanding.
Not that anyone is coming forward to apologize—and no one is looking for that. I have not had the need, nor was there any urgency for me as a journalist, to attend any of the school-board meetings for the past year or more. The school-board elections in May come and go with nothing other than a small and silent opposition to the incumbent candidates or with a candidate replacing a retiring board member, as was the case this year.
So what we had here was nothing more than a changing and redefining demographic shift along with a resistance and a transition that just took a little too long to straighten itself out. Schall, who has been affiliated in one capacity or another in the administration of this district throughout his professional career, said that way back then, 20 years ago, he saw the change coming. And he adds, though it was painful, distracting, and arduous, he always felt that it would work out well for all.
My meeting with Gary Schall was also attended by Jeremy Feder, the director of transportation services, and Tammy Mark, the public-relations person for District 15. It was a quiet summer afternoon. We met at the Middle School building on Broadway in Lawrence, where a great deal of work is under way to get the schools ready for the new school year that starts in just about five weeks.
We walked through the school, alternating between talking about the way things once were, the way they are presently, and the vision for the district’s future. It seems that the Lawrence district today is in a good place thanks to an education board that took a potentially out-of-control situation and righted it for the benefit of all involved—students, teachers, administration, and the overall community.
The massive internal construction taking place inside the Middle School today is, in one way, a result of the outside shift in the demographics. All the district buildings are of considerable size, built to accommodate a growing school population. And while the district has grown substantially over the last few years, most of that growth has taken place in the yeshiva population.
The expansive Number Six School in Woodmere was closed a few years ago after years of serious underuse. The building was sold to HALB—the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach—and it is anticipated that the elementary school will be moving to their new Woodmere Campus in September 2016. Also, beginning with the 2015 school year in a few weeks, the Shulamith School for Girls will be moving into the centrally located Number Five School in Cedarhurst. The school is currently in contract on a property in Inwood but has entered into a two-year lease on the impressive and large Cedarhurst school.
So, from one point of view, one might say that the worst fears of the public-school community are coming to fruition. Their public schools are becoming yeshivas. But that is not the way these changes are being perceived today. The shift has been cool and gradual and as a realistic result of the community’s needs. As an outcome of these adjustments, the school district has realized significant fiscal benefits which resulted in a solvent district—unlike many other school districts around the country—able to maintain and manage its economic obligations.
The effort to keep costs down here was a precursor to and even a prescient effort of a movement throughout Long Island and the country. Schools were spending wildly on construction, generous contracts, and more. The tax base in most communities could no longer sustain the annual increases across the board. For an indication of this out-of-control spending, one need not look further than our neighboring District 14 in Woodmere-Hewlett. Real-estate taxes on properties have increased at a regular annual rate to the point where homes are no longer affordable because of the tax assessment itself.
Not so here in the Lawrence district. Mr. Schall and the board members I spoke with for this article are pleased and proud of the fact that for the most part the school budget has remained stable and as a result there are no appreciable tax increases on homeowners.
You can see a clear enthusiasm in Gary Schall’s eyes as he talks about the district schools moving ahead. The big construction job taking place in the school today is mostly about moving more students into the Middle School building. With the closing of the Number Five School in Cedarhurst, students from grades three through five will now be educated in the same building as those in grades six through eight. And Schall says that is a good thing for a number of reasons. First and foremost, he points out the matter of doing away with the trauma of young students having to switch buildings when they enter the middle-school grades. “It will be a calmer educational atmosphere without a big transition for young children.”
Gary Schall is a man on a mission to unite and commit all his and his staff’s energy to improved education instead of distractions. He points with pride to Feder, now in his second year in the pivotal position of making certain that all the buses run properly and on time come September. Feder resides in Woodmere and is a chassidic young family man with a longish beard, and peyos wound behind his ears. This scene alone would have once driven this district wild. There is no telling what would have happened once upon a time if this board or one of the past boards tried to appoint someone like Mr. Feder.
But that is not the case anymore. Feder is an educational professional who performs a pressurized job with perfection, moving almost 8,000 students around the district and other parts of New York every day.
“I think Jeremy Feder is the face of the new Lawrence District,” Schall says. He adds that he is proud to be working with Jeremy and believes that the two of them together represent parts of both the history and the future of all the schools—public and private—that serve district children.
“We are all enthusiastic about the coming school year,” Schall says. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, but things are looking really good.”
Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.