East Ramapo monitor Mary Fox-Alter leaving district; will serve as Ossining interim super
Mary Fox-Alter, a well-known education leader in the Lower Hudson Valley, takes over as interim superintendent in Ossining on July 1. She will leave her current job as a state-appointed academic monitor in the East Ramapo school district.
Fox-Alter said Tuesday her final day as monitor was being worked out.
The state Department of Education, which appoints monitors to East Ramapo, did not return a request for comment.
Fox-Alter's departure in East Ramapo comes just after voters in that cash-strapped district once again rejected a budget plan.
"We're all sad about Mary leaving," East Ramapo school board President Shimon Rose said Tuesday. "Mary has been a great help to the district. She’s a real educator and we wish her well.”
Ossining’s current superintendent, Ray Sanchez, announced this month that he would be taking the top spot in the Tarrytowns district July 1 after a decade leading Ossining and 25 years working in that district.
Fox-Alter, a former Pleasantville superintendent, will lead Ossining through the 2023-24 school year as the district searches for a permanent superintendent.
“We are delighted that Mary has agreed to work with us through this transition period,” Ossining Board of Education President Katherin Crossling said in a statement. “Her experience is precisely what we need to ensure stability, operational efficiency, and support of our goals to meet the community’s expectations.”
Ossining has more than 4,500 K-12 public school students. According to 2021-2022 state data, Ossining’s student body is about 65% Hispanic/Latino, 9% Black and 19% white; 58% of students are considered economically disadvantaged and 16% are English language learners.
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Fox-Alter led Pleasantville as superintendent from 2010 through 2021, when she retired. Fox-Alter had also served as president of the Southern Westchester BOCES Chief School Administrators Association, president of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents, and was a member of the Executive Council of the New York State Council of School Superintendents.
Fox-Alter joined fiscal monitor Bruce Singer in East Ramapo in April 2022.
Key role in East Ramapo
The state Legislature voted in 2016 to install monitors in East Ramapo, and in 2021 heightened their powers, amid concerns of deteriorating fiscal and educational conditions in a district.
Limited resources and competing needs have caused rising tensions in East Ramapo, where most of the 10,500 public school students are children of color and many English language learners. Meanwhile, some 35,000 children who live within East Ramapo’s boundaries attend private schools, mostly yeshivas that serve children in the Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish community. The district is mandated to provide certain services to all students, including transportation.
The district’s budget is weighed down by growing transportation costs that now account for more than 20% of total spending. Repeated rejections by voters of tax levy hikes exacerbate the district’s fragile condition.
Singer and Fox-Alter in March wrote to the state Commissioner of Education warning that if school budgets kept failing at the polls, the district would face a $44 million deficit in five years.
Fox-Alter has become instrumental in discussing the need for local property taxpayers to invest in the district. She has repeatedly explained at school board meetings the importance of passing budgets and ensuring residents help fund the schools. She has likened education funding to a three-legged stool, with federal funding providing one leg of support, state funding another and local residents’ taxes the third. Without all three on solid ground, Fox-Alter’s analogy goes, the whole thing topples.
On May 16, East Ramapo's 2023-2024 budget plan, which included a 1.99% tax levy hike, failed to pass by 45 votes, according to unofficial results.
The school board will announce at its June 6 meeting whether it will try again to win voter approval with the same or an altered budget plan.
“We wish Ms. Fox-Alter all the best and thank her for her dedication and support to our East Ramapo students, staff and families,” East Ramapo schools Superintendent Clarence Ellis said Tuesday.
Nancy Cutler writes about People & Policy. Follow her on Twitter at @nancyrockland.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: NYS monitor for East Ramapo leaving to join Ossining district
