Edited by: TJVNews.com
As New York City yeshivas have dominated the headlines in recent weeks concerning the perception of the state government that they are failing abysmally in providing a basic secular education to their students, it has now been reported by the New York Post, that a boys yeshiva in Brooklyn has been singled out for this failure by state officials, even though the city has determined that the school in question is indeed providing a top notch secular course of studies to the students enrolled.
As first reported by The New York Times on Wednesday, the decision by the New York State Education Department revealed that there was a lack of evidence that Yeshiva Mesivta Arugath Habosem in Williamsburg provides sufficient instruction in core subjects like English and math, as required by state law, as was reported by the Post.
State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa found that, “Although the school provided some evidence of content geared towards these competencies, there was little evidence that instruction in such areas was regularly and meaningfully delivered to students,” according to the Post report.
The state and city had been ordered to finish an investigation into the school in June, after a New York Supreme Court judge ruled the agencies abdicated their responsibility to investigate the yeshiva, the Post reported.
The group known as Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools noted that representatives from the city Department of Education had visited the school “several times” and found that it was up to snuff.
Documentation shows that one of those visits was also attended by Commissioner Rosa.
Richard Bamberger, a spokesperson for PEARLS said, “It is disappointing that political appointees to the State Education Department won’t accept the City’s findings,” according to the Post report.
An e-mail from PEARLS on Wednesday indicated that a lawsuit has been filed in New York State Supreme Court, Albany County against the New York State Education Department seeking a declaration that the new regulations enacted by SED are in violation of state and federal law, and therefore null and void.
Here is a link to the lawsuit that PEARLS filed. file:///C:/Users/admin/Downloads/907655_22_PETITION_1%20(1).pdf
Visits under the former mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration culminated in a letter and supporting documentation in November, finding that the yeshiva “provides some but not all of the required subjects of secular instruction,” documents show, according to the Post report.
The Post report also indicated that a follow-up school visit months later under Mayor Eric Adams recommended that the school be found to provide “substantially equivalent” instruction to the basic subjects students learn in public school.
But the city did “not provide sufficient evidence or observations” to that effect, the state found — and multiple opportunities for the yeshiva to submit additional materials or allow for a school visit between August and September were turned down, the Post reported.
Rosa’s decision directs the yeshiva to work with the DOE within 60 days to submit a plan and timeline to the state, outlining how it will provide a basic education, the Post reported. But the deadline may be extended if the school officials show “good faith progress.”
The new regulations approved by the State Board of Regents would require all private schools to either offer Regents exams, be accredited by an approved accrediting body, or have its curriculum assessed and approved by the local school authority, as was reported by HaModia. The report also said that children attending schools that don’t meet these criteria would be considered truant, and their parents may be fined or eventually jailed.
“The NYS Education Department recently released new, proposed Substantial Equivalency Regulations for nonpublic schools. These regulations can give unprecedented authority over the Yeshivos to the local public-school districts, and the curricular requirements can present a serious challenge to the ability of many Yeshivos to be mechanech our children according to our mesorah”, wrote the Agudath Israel of America, a nonprofit Orthodox organization, last month.
For several years now, the New York Times has taken it upon itself to research the Hasidic private schools, writing about how the schools are “failing by design”. The Times has taken a handful of Hasidic schools as a sample, faulting the private schools overall for minimal time invested in secular studies. Last month, a particularly disparaging article published by Times reporters Eliza Shapiro and Brian Rosenthal states that the schools dedicate the majority of the day to religious studies, erroneously claiming this leaves the students ill equipped to find jobs and excel in society.
In response to the denigration heaped on yeshivas and the quality of education they provide to their students in the Times article, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel of the Agudath Israel organization which represents the views of the large swath of the Orthodox Jewish community in New York City and across the United States, recently penned a letter to Shapiro and Rosenthal.
Rabbi Zweibel said in this letter: “The timing of this article is terrible. Hate crime statistics, specifically crimes targeting Jews, are spiking dramatically — and most of these crimes are being directed against Hasidic Jews. Is now the time to publish a major article in the most prestigious newspaper in the world portraying the Hasidic schools — and, by extension, the entire Hasidic community — in the most negative light imaginable? Obviously, no one in his right mind would accuse reporters with your surnames of being anti-Semitic, but don’t you realize how an article like this will fuel the anti-Semites of the world to escalate their attacks against Hasidic Jews?”
