We salute Governor Kathy Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins for the enactment of new legislation addressing the plight of some of our yeshivas. The new New York State budget legislation, signed into law by Governor Hochul last Friday, contains language that amends a 100-year-old statute that requires private schools to provide its students with an education that is “substantially equivalent” to the education provided in the public schools. The amendment gives the yeshivas a welcome respite in their battle with state education officials who want to close them down because of their alleged non-compliance.
State education officials have long claimed that in some chassidic yeshivas there is an unacceptable lack of instruction in basic secular topics such as math, English and science and that they are therefore out of compliance with the equivalency mandate and should therefore be closed.
However, the schools have maintained that the monitoring system and the way they are required to demonstrate compliance are skewed against them. This includes the contention that the process doesn’t take into full account the transcendent educational value of instruction in sacred texts, the Talmud, and the commentaries.
Under the new legislation, demonstrating compliance is made much easier through the expansion of the number of testing options and choices of accrediting agencies. Schools will now be able to meet the equivalency requirements by giving students a year-end examination in a format to be developed that could include, but would not be limited, to the annual standardized tests that the state offers to public school. It would also allow them to seek out accrediting agencies familiar with their mission.
Significantly, the deadline to comply with state equivalency requirements is now delayed until the 2032-2033 school year, which will allow for orderly planning.
In sum, the governor and the legislature have signaled their displeasure with the State Education Department’s dictatorial approach to our yeshivas and broadened the pathways to compliance with the “substantial equivalence” mandate.
For far too long, we have been told that some of our parents may not continue their religious traditions as to how to educate their children. If nothing else, this would seem to run afoul of our constitutional freedom of religion rights.
Hopefully, that debate will now turn out to be a thing of the past.
