City Dragging Heels on Orthodox Jewish Schools Investigation, Critics Say

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WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — Nine months after announcing the NYC Department of Education (DOE) would look into allegations that nearly 40 Orthodox Jewish schools, or yeshivas, in Brooklyn and Queens weren't meeting state education requirements, DOE officials claim their investigation is underway — but refuse to provide any evidence they've gotten started.

The DOE probe came in response to a July letter from the progressive Jewish group Yaffed listing 39 religious schools the group claimed weren't teaching secular studies to the state standard.

State guidelines require all schools — including private, religious ones — to provide “instruction which is substantially equivalent to that provided in the public schools.” Enforcement is left to the superintendent of the district where a school is located.

Yaffed's letter had 52 signatories. Some of them were parents of current students at yeshivas on the list; others, former teachers and students at the schools.

Yaffed has not publicly announced the names of the yeshivas on its list. However, according to Naftuli Moster, a former Orthodox yeshiva student and the organization's executive director, they’re located mostly in the Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Crown Heights, Borough Park and Flatbush.

Tens of thousands of New York City children are currently enrolled in the Orthodox yeshiva system, according to the activist.

"If [DOE officials] had completed an investigation in a timely fashion, they could have already made significant changes," he said.

As things stand, he continued, another school year could be lost — meaning "thousands of children [will] enter the school system and start off on the wrong foot."

This month, Patch asked the DOE for an update on its investigation. In response, agency spokesman Harry Hartfield emailed over the following statement.

“Every child — no matter what school they attend — deserves a high-quality education. We treat these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the investigation is ongoing.”

Hartfield sent the same statement to The Jewish Week in February. In both cases, the department did not provide further information on the progress of its work.

The Jewish Week also reported that it has been requesting DOE documents related to the investigation for nearly a year, with no luck.

Last Monday, Hartfield responded to a series of follow-up questions from Patch with a second email. In it, he wrote that the department is “in the process of finalizing a set of requests that superintendents will send to non-public schools in their districts.”

The requests will be delivered to the yeshivas “soon,” Hartfield said.

The yeshivas' answers will then be used “in determining whether the schools are following state guidelines and are delivering substantially equivalent instruction to that provided by the city's public schools," he said.

If the Jewish schools are not believed to be following state guidelines, Hartfield said, “the superintendent will work with the non-public school to develop a plan to remediate deficiencies.”

That game plan sounds similar to the one DOE officials provided to The Jewish Week in August 2015. As the paper reported:

On Aug. 4, a DOE spokesman told The Jewish Week that the investigation would begin “soon” and would include sending “a set of requests” to the schools named in the letter.

Hartfield did not respond to Patch's additional questions about the DOE’s “requests." He also declined to provide any information the agency has collected on yeshiva curricula so far.

He did say, though, that it would “not be accurate” to conclude that the investigation has yet to begin.

“As I’ve said many times now, 'The investigation is ongoing,'" he said.

Patch reached out to multiple Orthodox schools in Brooklyn regarding allegations that their course material isn't meeting state standards. Our calls were not immediately returned.

Yaffed has been calling for an investigation into yeshivas in Brooklyn and Queens for upward of three years now.

The group's 2015 letter reads, in part:

Generally speaking, at the listed Yeshivas, English and mathematics are taught from around age 7 to age 13 for an average combined time of only 90 minutes and on only four days a week. Other secular subjects are not taught at all, let alone taught in English. At these Yeshivas, English instruction for boys stops at age 13. Girls generally receive a better secular education than do boys but we are still concerned that it is not sufficient to prepare them for their futures.

Moster told Patch that since submitting the letter, he has met with DOE officials twice: once December and once in January. While city staffers were receptive, he said, they lacked familiarity with the educational practices of Orthodox Jewish schools.

Moster said DOE staffers initially asked him to set up interviews with the letter's signatories, a task that would run "alongside the investigation."

"We were going to coordinate that together," Moster told Patch. "It was very clear."

But as of this week, the DOE has yet to follow through, he said.

Moster said the department told him its work would be done by spring. However, like Patch and The Jewish Week, he has not received any information on the status or content of the DOE's assessment.

"I think the DOE is going about the investigation all wrong,” Moster said in an interview, adding: "I don’t think they're actually trying to get to the bottom of what’s taking place in the yeshivas."

In Moster's opinion, the DOE should be conducting unannounced visits to yeshivas and "collecting evidence from people who have attended and whose kids are currently attending,” rather than relying on surveys.

The activist said he would consider filing a lawsuit to force changes at yeshivas.

Originally, Moster had planned on waiting for the conclusion of the agency's investigation before taking that step. But now, he said, "if this is really all they're doing," his organization may have to act sooner.