Six yeshivas have been informed that they are no longer legally considered schools, as the state Education Department begins to enforce regulations aimed at ensuring every student receives a “sound, basic education.”
In the last month, the state Education Department sent letters to six yeshivas in New York City, directing each family to enroll their children elsewhere this fall.
The letters also stated that the schools would lose all state funding. This funding enables schools to provide students with meals, transportation, and textbooks.
Leaders expect similar actions at yeshivas in Orange and Rockland counties, but have yet to hear from the Education Department.
“We are not going to allow the inspectors in, and we will not teach what you want to teach. “If we’re cut off, we’re cut off,” said Rabbi Abraham Klein, a spokesman for the troubled institutions.
Young Advocates for Fair Education, also known as Yaffed, an advocacy group founded by a former member of a Brooklyn Hasidic community, estimates that approximately 65,000 children statewide would be affected. In 2015, the group filed a lawsuit against the state Education Department in an attempt to improve education in yeshivas.
The schools have spoken with attorneys and intend to assist any parents who are threatened with fines or arrest for not sending their children to school.
“The government cannot tell them where to send their kids,” he said. “They’ll stay in the same schools. They’ve chosen the school’s quality and style, and they’re doing an excellent job of teaching children manners, religious education, and general education.”
It’s an existential struggle. He expressed concern that if some of the community’s Haredi Hasidic children are exposed to a secular education, they will not choose to live a strictly religious life as adults.
The attorneys have been instructed to “be prepared if the Education Department begins to target families,” he said. “We are ready for the fight. With God’s help, we’ll win.”
The state Education Department wants all children to learn English, both spoken and written, as well as three other subjects taught in English: math, science, and social studies.
The schools in question are primarily not taught in English and do not adhere to the standard math curriculum, but they do cover some of those topics.
According to Klein, the main sticking point is science.
“They want science to be part of the human — the philosophy they want to say that mankind is creating the world,” according to him. “We say everything is by God.”
Boys in yeshivas study only the Talmud, which is a collection of thousands of analytical pieces about the Torah. Boys learn critical thinking and multiple foreign languages as they evaluate works from the sacred text, but they do not study math, science, history, or English as their public school counterparts do throughout high school.
Klein objects to the Education Department’s belief that it would be beneficial to “open your kids to the world and teach them about everything.”
His community, he claimed, is a far better place without knowledge of everything.
“Our schools do not require guards or metal detectors. “You don’t find drugs or guns,” he said. “They’re discussing banning cellphones. We didn’t let it in to begin with because it would disrupt the education.”
He added that his school’s students learn manners, which leads to a respectful adult community.
“We aren’t suppressing our children. “You should follow our example and implement it in your own schools,” he said.
However, students who want to leave the community or pursue higher education claim that their yeshivas did not adequately prepare them for life.
That is what prompted Yaffed’s 2015 lawsuit, which resulted in the state Board of Regents determining that all schools must provide an education that is “substantially equivalent” to what students would learn in public school.
That means that schools must offer the same core classes, but they may incorporate religious topics into those courses.
Yaffed’s executive director, Adina Mermelstein Konikoff, said she is eagerly awaiting the state’s enforcement of its substantial equivalency guidelines.
“For far too long, these students have been deprived of even the most basic education,” she told the audience.
Her group is now investigating the economic impacts of the schools, which she believes result in far fewer doctors, lawyers, and other professionals in their community.
“It is a systemic deficiency,” she explained. “It prevents people from navigating modern-day issues. Healthcare, banking, and housing. Lack of basic knowledge about how the government should function. We know that lacking many of these basic skills makes it difficult to find work and contributes to the poverty cycle.
According to the 2020 Census, nearly half of the Haredi Hasidic community in New York City earns less than the federal poverty line.
She mentioned that girls go to various yeshivas, where they usually get a much broader education.
“We know that there are schools that are in the Haredi and Hasidic communities that do it in a cultural sensitive way,” she told me. The girls’ schools are mostly compliant. “We know it’s possible.”
Klein stated that none of the schools will change.
“We are ready to go to jail,” he said. “They are not ready to pick up thousands of families and take them to jail.”
