My name is Lieby Breuer, I am proud to announce my candidacy for a seat on our local School Board, the amazing Suffern Central School District (SCSD).

While I may not have children of my own who attend our (SCSD) district, yet I am a taxpayer in our district, it’s worth noting, we live in the “highest property-tax-paying district” of the entire USA.

I come from a family of 11, all of us siblings attended private schools, I have a large extended family, well over 100 nephews / nieces and counting, all of them which attend only private schools.

While our (SCSD) district does not have private school representation on it’s current school board, yet approx 30% of the children enrolled in our current school year are attending private schools, don’t they deserve representation on the school board?

I have been nominated to run for a seat on the school board, I promise to represent all of the children in our district, I will fight until every child in our district has a #ASeatOnTheBus.

Our (SCSD) district has an annual budget of almost $150,000,000 a year, and it’s growing each year – along with the property tax that we work so hard to pay.

The expense to transport our 2,000 private school children in the district, is technically a fraction of the budget, it’s less than 3% of the entire budget.

Yet, in 2016 our district changed the private school transportation schedule, when the board members were promising the taxpayers to cut on property taxes, by cutting on the budget of the private school children’s transportation, with the excuse the private school children are draining our school budget.

Since 2016 it has been a nightmare for the private school parents, these children are attending more than 100 different school locations mostly around Ramapo, parents are losing hours of work daily, because they are busy transporting their children to and from school.

Since 2016 thousands of children are showing up late to class on a daily basis, all their classmates know the Suffern Central School District children are sort of part time students.

There are many events and programs offered by the private schools for their students, such as after school programs etc. our districts (SCSD) children usually miss out on those events, unless they get carpool arranged by their parents, is this fair of our district not to have flexibility with the School on busing scheduling?

While our Public school employees are getting payroll raises, our districts starting salary is at $100,000 a year, and not even our residents that are getting these jobs, the district is bringing in “out-of-district” employees to pay these 6-figure salaries, which is paid with our sweating tax dollars.

While the (SCSD) district has lost 30% of its student enrollment in the public schools over the last decade, yet we haven’t seen a reduction in the budget just yet, why? Shouldn’t we see a 30% reduction in our school tax bill? Why has the taxes been going up annually, simultaneously while the district has been losing public school student enrollments on a yearly basis, for more than 2 decades.

How is it possible that the current school year budget is much higher than the budget a decade ago, when the district had 2,000 more pupils enrolled in public schools than it has now?

How is it we don’t see a reduction in facility occupancy, classroom use, employee payroll, electricity and other utilities decreased, when there is a 30% reduction in public school student enrollment?

Private school children are merely receiving transportation and lunch from the taxpayers dollars, which totals to a fraction of the entire school budget.

Why doesn’t our district offer #TitleOneForAll children, including those in private schools?

The private school parents alone are paying into the pot of the school budget $50,000,000 annually via their school tax dollars, yet we pay tuition again – when our tax dollars should actually be paying for our children’s education; and I am personally paying for my child’s tutoring because we don’t have in the district #TitleOneForAll.

Sadly many parents in our district are familiar with the denials of basic speech therapy for an unfortunate child because the parents enrolled their child in a private school, why have us the parents pay out-of-pocket once again for basic speech or occupational therapy of a 3-year-old? “we provide those services in the public school”, is the excuse from the District. Well, what about unfortunate children themselves – don’t they deserve to get services provided via #TitleOneForAll?

I do have many friends and associates who in fact send their kids in our public school, right here in the (SCSD) district, yes I will be the first to admit, they mostly have nice things to say about school, the grades, services, and all of the extra classes their lucky children of our amazing (SCSD) district receive – which are wonderful, and I am very happy for them and for their children, and I’ll be happy to continue to pay my property tax to support The best school in the country, but not at the expense of cutting basic rights for other children in our district.

“Equal treatment for all, special treatment for none,” is our campaign slogan.

We are all equally made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-28)

Lieby Breuer

Lieby [email protected]

All candidates for elected office are encouraged to send in a bio outlining who they are and why they are running. Please email us at: [email protected]