(New York Jewish Week) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams completes an investigation into the state of secular education in Haredi Orthodox schools, initiated by his predecessor Bill de Blasio, according to The New York Times. said it was planned.
A spokesperson confirmed Adams’ intentions in a much-anticipated Times investigative article about the quality of secular education in yeshiva in Brooklyn, Rockland and Orange counties.
Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio launched an investigation in 2015 following complaints about the poor quality of secular education at the city’s Haredi Orthodox Yeshiva. But the pandemic put the investigation on hold. Since then, neither Mayor Adams, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, nor her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, have raised a stone on the issue. Public school.
But on Sunday, a spokesperson named Maxwell Young told The New York Times – apparently for the first time – that the Adams administration intends to reopen and complete the city’s investigation. I believe it should meet high standards,” he told the paper.
Sunday’s investigation by The Times’ longtime educational reporter Eliza Shapiro and Pulitzer Prize winner Brian Rosenthal included translations of dozens of Yiddish documents, a survey of thousands of pages of public records, and much more. It’s the result of two years of reporting. Over 275 of her interviews with yeshivas and individuals associated with the Hasidic community.
A substantive article, also published in Yiddish in The Times, quotes test scores and other data and concludes: [haredi Orthodox] Children are systematically denied basic education, leaving many trapped in cycles of unemployment and dependence. In addition to poor grades in education, the article contains accusations of corporal punishment, lack of government oversight, and misuse of funds.
The Times reported that despite failing to meet educational standards in math, science, and basic literacy, Hasidic boys’ schools “found ways to tap into the government’s vast sums of money, raising $1 billion in the last four years alone.” We collected more than a dollar.” (The Times notes that Haredi Orthodox schools are segregated by gender, with girls “studying less religious scriptures and therefore receiving more secular education” while “girls I am also struggling,” he said.)
In particular, a Times article found that about 50,000 boys attending more than 100 yeshivas in the Orthodox enclaves of Brooklyn and the Lower Hudson Valley, where New York’s Hasidim population of about 200,000 is concentrated, are “where else?” They are suffering from a level of deprivation of education that has never been seen before.” in New York. “In 2019 (the last year for which full data are available), only nine schools in the state had less than 1% of students tested at grade level, according to The Times. All were schools for Hasidic boys.
Nevertheless, The Times reports that over 50 new boys’ schools have opened in the last decade. They’re getting more and more money from the government: Reporter analyzes “dozens of federal, state, and local programs” for 2019, despite lack of public accounting Look, I discovered that the boy’s yeshiva received more than $375 million during this time.
The New York Times points out that these schools “earn far less per student than public schools.” Still, “they seem to get more government funding on average than other private schools in the state, including other religious schools.”
Hasidic voting blocs can cast tens of thousands of votes for their chosen candidate. Political consultant Evan Stavisky told the New York Times: “They are part of the New York political structure.” The yeshiva system plays a key role in getting votes. In some schools, students who bring in a parent’s “I Voted” sticker can earn a reward, according to The Times.
Mayor Adams has close ties to the city’s Haredi Orthodox community. During his campaign, he won the support of factions of the Sathmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn, and his senior adviser, Joel Eisdorfer, was the first Hasidic Jew to join the senior staff of his administration. (Adams’ close ties with the Haredi community have recently been a cause for concern among more liberal Jews. In May, the mayor met with 55 female rabbis and Kantors, He wanted to emphasize that a Jewish leader is “more than just a man. Beard.”)
According to The Times, Adams’ spokesperson Young said, “The mayor’s decisions are not subject to political support.”
Former mayor de Blasio told The New York Times that he had taken complaints about Hasidic schools seriously before the pandemic. It would have urged states to stand up and sanction unresponsive schools,” he said. “And that’s what has to happen now.”
Leaders of the Hasidic community are staunch defenders of the education system, making evading school surveillance a top priority. Before the New York Times article was published, Simcha He Eikenstein, a Hasidic parliamentarian from Brooklyn’s Borough His Park, published a column in the New York Sun attacking the investigation and refuting its conclusions. “The summary makes it clear that The Times’s next article, sometimes based on anonymous critics, handpicked data, and outright lies, denigrates the entire community,” he wrote.
Eichenstein repeated these complaints on Twitter Sunday morning, describing the article as “a pathetic roast of hand-picked data and inaccuracies peddled by the same group obsessed with Orthodox Jews. What is clear is that the NYT has no interest in the positive values of our school and is only spreading lies for clicks.”
Nearly four years after being proposed, the final amendments to the New York State Department of Education’s rules for secular education in yeshiva and other nonpublic schools will be put to a ballot by the State Board of Regents on Monday and Tuesday. Meanwhile, The New York Times will continue its research into secular education in Hardi orthodox schools. The paper invites those who have had experience in Hasidic schools to share their stories.
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