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I am a Lakewood mother whose daughter has not received an acceptance letter into any highschool yet. We have no tznius issues and applied to 3 schools as instructed by the vaad. We left a message with the vaad but didn’t hear anything yet.
I’d like to hear from anyone who knows anything about this matzav or who also went through this unpleasant experience. Thanks!
Well, there will always be some girls not accepted in round one, and some girls who were doubly accepted in round one. Hopefully in round two it will work out. I believe it’s too early to complain.
yes!
some will not get anything, in the first round. and they won’t have any stigma attached to them, because that’s the way the school business is run in Lakewood. And we have to accept it b’sever ponim yofois!
yes! RIGHT ON LAKEWOOD!
Check the homepage. I saw something about this by the ‘news alerts’.
Welcome to “lakewoodtics”
Y is EVERYTHING politics
Down2earth: this happens every year in lakewood. Last year the school started a week late because there was so many girls who didn’t know what school they were going to. So don’t worry. She’ll get in eventually somewhere. Just keep on calling them.
rejection is very humiliating. now is the time to use all energy to strenthen emunah and bitachon, hopefully the nightmare will be over soon and you will have grown from the experience. yes, we know that everything is for the good but nonetheless we are human beings and some things hurt, like a vaccine. hatzlocha b’chol inyanim
round 1?? round 2?? you make it sound like a computer game!!
“And we have to accept it b’sever ponim yofois!”
Why? This school rejection thing is an embarrassment on the entire Lakewood community. The people running the schools should be ashamed, and the rebbeim should be speaking out forcefully against this.
How many girls nebach suffer in a ruchnious sense due to this annual lakewood school hypocrisy. Lots of people are going to have to answer achar meah v’esrim.
I don’t understand why parents tolerate this silliness. A boycott of the schools seems in order. No one should participate in the application process, nor register their daughters in these schools. Things will change very quickly were that to happen.
Cantoresq, but none of them would get a shidduch then…
Perhaps one way to avoid the pain & embarrassment of rejection would be to set up a system similar to the one used by hospitals for accepting medical students into residency programs. Every student lists her choices, ranking them in order of preference (only listing those programs she is willing to attend). Every residency program lists the students it would like to accept, again ranked by order of preference. All of the lists (which are of course kept private) are entered into a computer program, which weighs the lists (giving slight preference to residency program preference over those of individual students) & assigns each student to a program. That way no student is accepted into two programs, which would put lower-ranked students at an extreme disadvantage.
One essential part of the ranking system is “scramble day”, which takes place after students have been assigned to programs but before the assignments are announced. On scramble day, any students who haven’t matched to a program are informed of their status & meet with the dean of their school, who then calls the directors of residency programs with unfilled slots. The dean then tried to place as many students as possible in these unfilled slots. Many medical schools will have very few students who need to be placed this way, & nearly all students are placed by the end of scramble day. Only after scramble day are residency program lists officially announced. Generally the fact that a student didn’t get placed until scramble day isn’t publicized unless the student shares that information herself.
Perhaps a similar system would help avoid the pain & embarrasment caused to hundreds of girls & their families. The most important elements in my opinion is an algorithm that avoids double acceptance, since any time a girl is accepted into two schools, one girl is not accepted into any school. Also, some type of “scramble day” procedure for those who are not initially accepted into any school is important so that no one needs to know who wasn’t placed initially.
This may sound very complicated & unnecessary technological overkill. But I personally think that technological overkill is preferable to causing pain & embarrassment to hundreds of young teenagers & their families.
anon, that sounds very intriguing and reasonable.
cherrybim, I’m not aware of the poskim ruling that a girl has a RIGHT to go to the school of her CHOICE. (I don’t see how that would even be possible, space-wise.) Please clarify.
Can someone please explain the process for the non-Lakewooders among us?
Thanks. 🙂
The Wolf
Absent from the conversation is any mention of the 800 ound gorilla in the room; Is this what G-d wants? Does he want innocnet neshamot humiliated in this fashion? Think of the cynicism and dsdain for religion that this nonsense potentially engenders. And for what? 3/10 of an inch of hemline, or insufficiently opaque pantyhose? I mean for Heaven’s sake, it’s not like thse girls have fathers who teach Torah in khaki pants.
Agree with Joseph. There may not be enough spots, & the principals have to squeeze people in September every year.
Anon: The students who don’t get residencies will go elsewhere, even out of the country if needed (or will just not get a residency). Here there seems to be too few “spots” until the Roshei Yeshiva force a squeeze (which lowers everyone elses education, if there are too many children in the class).
down2earth, I feel for you, but this is part of Lakewood. People who live in Lakewood commute to Brooklyn, Monsey, the five towns, etc. so that they can live in Lakewood. Be happy that you are in an area that has so many Frum Yidden; this is a result.
cantoresq: People move to Lakewood so that they can conform (at least those who are part of the Yeshiva’s community), not make waves.
Joseph, if you put it that way, then you are RIGHT. Sorry for the confusion. But certainly, if she was in the school previously, my statement is all-the-more RIGHT.
There is also a 600 pound gorilla in the room. How much of the rejection of certain sutdents has to do with school admissions policies, which are subject to market forces as opposed to social pressures? Are girls rejected only becuase they fail to merit a spot in school (i.e. based on academic performance, standarized test scores etc), or is it due to an unwritten but clearly and well known class system (i.e. certain schools will not accpet children of ba’alei teshuva, others won’t take children whose parents have collebe educations etc.), or even worse, parental snobbery?
Have there been any statements of the gedolim one way or another on the Lakewood school system?
cherrybim, that is the clarification I sought. Your first comment didnt qualify your statement as being applicable to students already in the school.
GAW & cherrybim: I know that the analogy with the residency match program isn’t perfect. Students often move to other cities for residency, for one thing, and all of these students are staying in Lakewood. Also, I understand that there just aren’t enough slots to go around. I do think, though, that a process that would match each student to only one school would help conserve limited slots. Also, I think the “scrambling” to expand classes or open new schools to fit in the girls who haven’t been accepted into any existing slots should take place before any letters are sent out. From what I’ve read & heard (I have never lived in Lakewood) new classes & schools must be established every year anyways. But if this process is completed before any acceptance letters are mailed, none of the girls have to deal with the stress & embarrassment of not knowing where they’ll go.
I have a relative who went through scramble day (he was promised a shomer shabbos residency at one program, ranked only that program, & then the program director decided to rank him last) & I was struck by the fact that 20-something year old adults going through the scramble day process are treated with more dignity & respect than these young Lakewood teenagers. And that is simply wrong.
I really have no idea what goes on in Lakewood and these questions may be naive and certainly are based on ignorance.
Does every elementary school have a high school? Of the elementary schools that do have a high school, do they accept all girls from their elementary schools into their high schools? If not, why not? Is it an issue of “space” (IE, not enough classroom seats for all the high school girls)? If it is space, would opening another school be difficult if the entire community was behind opening another school to avoid this issue? Expanding one or 2 schools? Is it really an issue of to many people wanting to get into specific school(s) because of perception and beliefs about the school? Why is this a problem for girls and not boys? How many high school age boys learn outside of lakewodd for high school? Enough so that it is not a problem? Is it that boys high schools are easy to open because finding rebbeim to say a shiur is easy in lakewood?
It seems that every year this discussion comes up, again. Do the powers that be wait until July of every year to deal with it?
Jphone, out of town schools go k-12.
And some schools may have siblings policies that further limit the amount of open spaces they have each year.
Tzippi.
1: Is Lakewood really “out of town” in this regard?
2: If all the schools go K-12 then what is the problem? why is the school suddenly no good for 9th grade or on the flip side, why is the girl suddenly no good for the school?
Tzippi,
What makes you say that out-of-town schools go K-12? LA doesn’t have any schools that do. And by saying that, are you implying that Lakewood is out of town or in? I don’t get it.
Sorry, I meant that Lakewood was IN town, and that MANY out of town cities have systems that go k – 12 (or if there is one school through 8 and one high school there’s not too much suspense for the eighth graders).
Thought the cr might want to digest the following numbers.
Presently there are 90 more 8th grade girls than 9th grade girls in Lakewood.
There are 180 more 7th grade girls than 9th grade girls in Lakewood.
There are 270 more 6th grade girls than 9th grade girls in Lakewood.
This is true for the next 5-6 yrs.
In other words.
In order to assure place for upcoming 9th grade girls over the next couple of years there is a need for 3 complete parallel 9th grades of 30 girls each to open up in 2009-2010. Then again another 3 parallel 9th grades in 2010-2011 etc. etc. for the next 5 years.
Anyone wonder why??
POPULATION GROWTH B”H.
This problem isn’t going away any time soon.
AZ: It isn’t a “problem” (as you put it.) It is a brocha.
I agree 1000% that population growth is a bracha. “problem” refers to the difficulty in getting into school and I don’t think anyone considers that a bracha. Therefore, unless we have large news schools opening up EVERY year, the “problem” will not go away.
Thanks, tzippi – I got it now.
AZ
Are you a mathmatecian or do you do survey’s of populations in your free time?!
If I showed up in Lakewood this afternoon, announced I had a funding, a building, a competent staff all ready to go and was opening a girls high school. Would people be happy? Would anyone try to stop me?
What are you teaching? What are the hashkafos?
BY2:
I am far from a mathmetecian no do I do survey’s- Free Time?!?! Who has That
The numbers I qouted are from a person who was looking into opening a Girls High School. He did his due diligence- and this is what he found.
Pretty Interesting!
i’m teaching the same thing every other girls school is teaching. my hashkafos are no different than anyone else who runs a girls school.
What Lakewood (and New York) needs is a quality frum high-school for girls which is totally cut off from the local rabbinic yeshiva leadership powers, along the lines of an out-of-town frum school.
If that ever happens, be prepared for a population of happy kids and parents as well.
Are any two schools ever the same?
wow! with the recession & all, looks like my best option is to move down
to Lakewood & open up a girls school. Any partners?
The only problem is I hate politics!
I’m in. 🙂
As p practical matter, any new school will need to be built to straddle the city’s boundary.
That way Limudei Kodash can be done inside the city and all Limudei Chol including computer classes be done outside the city.
in out of big out(and most times small also) of town communities such as where i live there are 3 different kinds of high schools and are not connected to any elementry school. in my school we get kids from a bunch of different elementry schools. but there is no problem because to get accepted in to high school doesn’t mean u have 2 be exactly like everyone else & in a little box like in Lakewod.
Did your daughter get an acceptance letter yet?
about opeing up a new school, it is very complicated because most girls like 2 go2 an established school and dont like feeling like “a school for the rejects”
you were asked to stop using internet abbreviations. please see the rules moderator-80
Purple, thank you for writing that. It is the source of all the problems. People attach an illusion to a school and decide that IT is where they MUST go and anywhere else is unaccaeptable. Too many people trying to fit into too few opening is always a recipe for disaster, especially when there is no plan to mitigate the situation.
Forget about this kind of school or that kind of school.
In order to assure enough desks and chairs for upcoming 9th grade girls over the next couple of years there is a need for 3 complete parallel 9th grades of 30 girls each to open up in 2009-2010. Then again another 3 parallel 9th grades in 2010-2011 etc. etc. for the next 5 years.
This problem isn’t going away any time soon.
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