An expose in the New York Post revealed leaked emails in which the de Blasio administration promised to stall release of an investigation of substandard Yeshivas in exchange for Orthodox Jewish support of mayoral control of the New York City public schools in the state legislature. The substandard Yeshivas allegedly don’t teach English, science, or other secular subjects. The city was supposed to conduct an investigation but withheld the results until the legislature renewed mayoral control. YAFFED is an organization created by graduates of Yeshivas who believe they were cheated of a secular education.
Naftuli Moster Executive Director
naftuli@yaffed.org http://www.yaffed.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday, May 11, 2020
Contact: Press@yaffed.org
Leaked emails reveal backroom deal to go slow on Yeshiva investigations; Mayor and top aides should be held accountable for denying children a basic education
Yaffed Calls on City and State to Enforce Education Laws After Bombshell Report of Stonewalling by New York City
New York, NY – A shocking new report confirms how New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio abused his power by interfering with a Department of Education investigation into allegations that tens of thousands of New York City children were being denied a basic education in Yeshivas. According to the leaked emails contained in the article, Mayor de Blasio was himself involved in offers to Ultra-Orthodox leaders to delay any DOE report on the investigation’s findings and to go “gentle” with the final report, in exchange for the extension of mayoral control in 2017, which was being held hostage by State Senators taking directions from leaders of the Ultra-Orthodox community. The deal to delay the report was apparently made so that Senator Simcha Felder had time to ram through the “Felder Amendment,” which was an attempt to soften the legal requirement that these schools provide a “substantially equivalent” education and to derail the State Education Department’s ability to ensure the right of Yeshiva students to receive one.
As Naftuli Moster, executive director of Young Advocates for Fair Education (Yaffed ) said, “These internal emails confirm how Mayor de Blasio and his top officials abused their power by making a deal with Ultra-Orthodox leaders to interfere and delay the release of the findings of an investigation into the denial of the rights of tens of thousands of New York City children to receive a basic education. With these alarming facts now fully public, we are demanding immediate actions be taken to reverse the corrupt results of these unconscionable acts.
Today, we call on the City of New York and New York State to enforce the law without further delay, and for the Attorney General’s office to launch a probe into the corruption that these emails reveal.”
The organization Yaffed called for the following actions to occur:
1. The Board of Regents should immediately approve the long-delayed “substantial equivalency” regulations, first proposed almost two years ago on July 3, 2019; otherwise, they will be further rewarding and abetting the stonewalling efforts by Ultra-Orthodox leaders and the city.
2. The New York State Attorney General Letitia James should direct the Public Integrity Bureau of her office to launch an investigation into the actions of the Mayor and his top aides, to determine whether the various favors made and promised to the Ultra-Orthodox leaders in return for renewing mayoral control were legal.
3. The New York City Department of Education (DOE) should release publicly all their findings on the education provided by individual Yeshivas and together with the State, develop a plan to enforce “substantial equivalency” as soon as possible, so it can be quickly and efficiently implemented when schools are back in session.
4. The DOE and SED should ensure that during the coronavirus crisis, all Yeshiva students are receiving adequate secular instruction via remote learning.
5. Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark, who appears to have been responsible for orchestrating this deal to sacrifice the education of tens of thousands of Yeshiva students, should be asked to immediately resign.
6. The leaders of the State Legislature, Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and the respective Chairs of the Education Committees in the State Legislature, Assemblymember Michael Benedetto and Senator Shelley Mayer, should make it a priority to repeal the Felder Amendment, which was passed as a result of this disgraceful deal between the Mayor and Ultra-Orthodox leaders to delay the investigation into the Yeshivas.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bravo! to Naftuli Moster and the Young Advocates for Fair Education (Yaffed).
The above shows, again, WHY public education needs to remain rooted in a democratic/republican political base. To many who people any and all religious groups (including Catholic) the term “secular” is equated with “evil.”
When, in fact, its the democratic secular base that keeps those factions, that exist in the hearts of many involved in ALL devout religious organizations, from making systematic (and weaponizing) the totalitarian desires hidden in their hearts, and manifest in their specific interpretation of their religion, its history, and its doctrines.
To absolve with secular culture (and its state-mandated beginnings in K-12), is to clear the way for a return to “whose on top” religious wars. No one I know will forgive them, even though they don’t know what the heck they are doing to themselves and to the rest of us who people world should those desires become the law of the land. CBK
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Religious groups of all kinds demand public funding with no accountability or oversight. That’s what the voucher program does.
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Diane Avoiding public oversight is just one step in the road to the transfer of power from the public/democratic culture (the secular evil!) to whatever religious order the totalitarian belongs to.
There are lots of midway “stations” along the way–which the rule of law, democratic institutions (free press, open communications/free speech, education health and welfare, etc.) and the people who “get it,” continue to counter-balance–but the end run, even if hard-line religious ideologists don’t see it themselves, is a re-tribalization of culture and a “return” to a one-religion government–there go the freedoms we enjoy and tend to take for granted.
In my experience, some just hate “secularism” in what I see as their shallow, bumper-sticker minds. BTW, I read a related article from your Guardian link on how neo-liberalism has saturated world thought–an excellent read and easily linked up with the ideologies of the right-wing so-called think-tanks, e.g., ALEC and our transactional culture. I went back to get the link, but it disappeared (I don’t have a subscription.) CBK
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The ultra-Orthodox receive lots of public funding including Title 1, free lunch and breakfast for their students. New York Democrats have a long standing deal with them. In exchange for their vote, NY will look the other way with regard to the shoddy schools. People are finally asking for accountability that is long overdue.
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retired teacher says “People are finally asking for accountability that is long overdue.”
You are correct that it is long overdue, but Yaffed isn’t acting like an organization that wants accountability.
Who does have oversight over yeshivas? It isn’t the NYC DOE which can’t even tell charter schools that receive per pupil DOE funding from their budget what to do. If the DOE is completely powerless over charters which actually take money directly out of DOE coffers, why would the DOE have any oversight over yeshivas that parents have to pay private tuition to attend? They don’t. The state does.
So all of the state agencies which actually could have oversight over yeshivas do nothing when Yaffed complains. The only people willing to help even a little is the DOE in NYC which is completely powerless except for maybe, possibly being able to investigate and write a report — although only with the cooperation of the yeshivas themselves since the DOE has no power to tell them what to do. Remember the DOE can[‘t even tell a charter school that receives DOE money for every student they can recruit what to do — why would YAFFED or anyone assume that the DOE can tell privately operated religious schools what to do?
So the DOE, despite having no power, does the right thing and tries to help YAFFED in the very limited way that they can – do an investigation that is constrained by them having no real right to do any oversight of yeshivas!
Then what happens? The right wing billionaires who want to privatize public education and force NYC taxpayers to give charters whatever they want whenever they want are very, very mad at the fact that NYC now has a progressive pro-public education Mayor who supports teachers unions and does only the bare minimum he is legally obligated to do for charters, when what those right wing billionaires and their Republican state politician supporters really want is for charters to have the complete run of the DOE.
The Mayor did some political horse trading. In return for a few religious politicians in Albany joining with the progressive, pro-public education Democrats in Albany to stop the right wing billionaires from taking away a progressive pro-public education Mayor’s power (a power which right wing Republicans only want rabidly pro-charter Mayors to have), de Blasio delayed release of a report that had absolutely no power to change anything in yeshivas because the people with oversight over yeshivas are at the state level!
de Blasio put the needs of a million low-income, mostly African-American and Latinx students in NYC pubic schools over the needs of some yeshiva students whose parents were willing to pay for them to have a substandard education despite them being free to choose NYC public schools and pay nothing.
I just want to point out what likely would have happened if Mayor de Blasio had not made this deal. What if he would have said “I don’t care what happens to the kids in NYC public schools, I am going to release this report about yeshivas now instead of next year.”
It is very likely that the progressive left would have said “how could you throw union teachers and all the kids in NYC public schools under the bus and empower the right wing pro-charter anti-union, anti-public school Republicans in Albany who hate public schools, just to publicize the problems of a small group of Jewish children in subpar yeshivas their parents want to spend their own money to attend?”
It is very likely that the progressive pro-public education parents would have said “Mayor de Blasio, you know that the NYC DOE has absolutely no power to do anything about yeshivas and it is up to the state to do their oversight, but you still chose to sacrifice the one million low income students in public schools just to do a favor for a group of Jewish former yeshiva students who refuse to take their complaints to Cuomo and his state agencies which are the ones responsible for what happens in yeshivas. Mayor de Blasio, you tried to do a favor for some Jewish former yeshiva students and you were willing to throw 1 million NYC public school students under the bus to do them a favor because those former yeshiva students didn’t want to demand accountability from the powerful people in the state — Cuomo and his appointees — who are actually accountable!!!”
I’m very suspicious of why YAFFED is blaming the one entity — the NYC DOE — that has no power to do anything but still tried to help them instead of focusing their criticisms on all the Cuomo-overseen state agencies that have the power to change things (unlike de Blasio) but have done nothing.
Yes, YAFFED got less than they believed they would get from de Blasio in a horse trade that resulted in one million NYC public school students getting more. But YAFFED still got a lot more from the de Blasio DOE than they got from the state agencies that actually have the power that the NYC DOE does NOT have to oversee yeshivas!
Imagine a world where the people who actually have power over yeshivas — Cuomo and Albany — took responsibility instead of blaming de Blasio because he made a horse trade to delay the report in order to push a progressive policy that helped a million NYC public school children.
One caveat — if you agree with the pro-charter NY Post that Mayoral Control should only happen if the Mayor is rabidly pro-charter and anti-union and willing to turn over the keys to the DOE to anti-public school pro-charter privatizers, then you don’t think what de Blasio horse traded for was worth it.
If you agree with the NY Post that if a progressive pro-public school Mayor is elected in NYC, his power should be limited, but if it is a rabidly pro-charter Mayor, he should have complete control, then you might believe that de Blasio’s horse trade was worthless.
But the truth is that the NYC DOE’s late report didn’t harm yeshiva students. If that report had been released, those yeshiva students would be in the same situation they are now because the DOE is powerless to do any oversight with regards to yeshivas or charters.
And shockingly, YAFFED is not criticizing Cuomo and his agencies that DO have the power to do oversight of yeshivas — despite all of those state agencies with oversight power doing even less than de Blasio has done!
So, if you knew that delaying a report that the DOE should not be the agency doing in the first place was the price you’d pay to benefit one million NYC public school students, would you do it?
Or would you throw all the public school students — and their union teachers — under the bus to help former yeshiva students who seem too scared to challenge the powerful interests in Albany that could actually do something for their cause?
If de Blasio had acted to harm one million public school students and their union teachers, saying that helping a group of former yeshiva students publicize their complaints so that Cuomo and Albany did the oversight job that the NYC DOE has no power to do, wouldn’t we all be mad at de Blasio? Wouldn’t we all wonder why YAFFED isn’t focusing their ire on the powerful people in Albany whose responsibility it is to do oversight instead of focusing their ire on a Mayor who actually tried to help them despite having no real power to do anything?
Wouldn’t suspicious pro-public school progressives be wondering why Mayor de Blasio traded away what was good for a million low-income public school students just to help out some former yeshiva students who should have been taking their complaints to the state officials who actually had the oversight responsibility and power to help them?
I certainly wish that de Blasio could have released that report a year earlier and also not thrown public school students and union teachers under the bus. But he could not do both. The NY Post doesn’t really want de Blasio to tell yeshivas what they can do — if de Blasio tried, the NY Post would be writing story after story about how de Blasio has no right to tell yeshivas what to do, just like de Blasio has no right to tell charters what to do.
What the NY Post is angry about is a pro-public school progressive Mayor’s power over public schools being extended. If de Blasio had been a pro-charter Mayor who delayed the yeshiva report in exchange for those politicians voting with right wing Republicans to allow 500 new charters in NYC, the NY Post would have been fine with that deal.
Yaffed is being used and it makes me not want to support them anymore and wonder about their agenda. Why the focus on de Blasio – who has no power — and not on Cuomo, who has all the power and none of his agencies have done anything?
Sure the DOE report was delayed, but they did a report, which is more than Andrew Cuomo and his agencies did. And the DOE report was never going to amount to anything since the DOE has no power to do anything. A report from the state oversight agencies that have the power to do the oversight is what matters. de Blasio was doing Yaffed a favor to try to get them some publicity and he delayed that favor to Yaffed to get something for 1 million public school students. As a NYC public school parent, I might be sort of mad to think he sacrificed my kid and one million others just to do a favor for former yeshiva students who had been blown off by the Cuomo agencies that were supposed to help them.
But de Blasio is being attacked for not hurting public school students so he could do a favor for Yaffed! If he had done that favor for Yaffed and thrown public school students under the bus, he would also be criticized. I certainly would have criticized him for putting the needs of an organization that wanted the DOE to do them a favor because they were afraid to directly call out the powerful people like Cuomo who weren’t doing their job.
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It is a shame you are never willing to hold DeBlasio accountable.
He made a dirty deal to let these Yeshivas off the hook.
His aides’ emails demonstrate that he suppressed a damning report on how bad these Yeshivas are in exchange for getting the vote of Simcha Felder in the State Senate to renew mayoral control.
He was willing to sacrifice the education of thousands of children to retain his power.
By the way, he hasn’t stood up to the charters in years.
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Diane,
I am absolutely willing to hold de Blasio accountable. But those who wish he would have sacrificed Mayoral control so that YAFFED didn’t have to call out Andrew Cuomo and his state agencies directly for their oversight failure should also recognize the only two choices de Blasio had.
Like I said, I wish de Blasio could have done both, but he could not.
So which was more important? I don’t have a problem with people who say that de Blasio should have given up Mayoral control to give publicity to Yaffed’s yeshiva criticisms in the hopes that giving Yaffed some publicity might eventually result in Andrew Cuomo and the state agencies with the power to do something to actually do something.
If you don’t support Mayoral control and wish de Blasio had lost it, then he should not have made the deal.
But if you believe as I do that it was important that a progressive pro-public school politician retained Mayoral control, then it was a fairly good deal, especially given that it certainly appears that it doesn’t matter when de Blasio’s DOE releases a report if the people who actually have the power to change things in yeshivas — Andrew Cuomo’s state oversight agencies — are not going to do anything about it. If YAFFED is outraged at anyone it should be Andrew Cuomo! Cuomo knows about the report, and frankly, could have made sure that a state oversight agency that actually had the power to do a true investigation (unlike de Blasio) did one. de Blasio’s report was always going to be unimportant because he could only do what the yeshivas allowed him to do out of the goodness of their heart! Because the DOE has no authority over yeshivas!
I was having a conversation with my kid about this issue, and my kid said “de Blasio should just have lied and told those politicians he would delay the report but then as soon as he got the votes of those politicians that he needed, he should have just released the report.”
I suppose that would have been another choice, but not sure a progressive politician lying would have gone over well in the press, either.
I’m not a knee jerk defender of de Blasio. But I do think that if YAFFED really wanted change, they would be railing against Andrew Cuomo and his state officials who actually have oversight power over yeshivas.
Are you saying I am wrong and it is really de Blasio who has oversight of yeshivas and he can tell them what to do and it isn’t the state that has all the oversight responsibility over yeshivas? Because if de Blasio could order the yeshivas to do what he demanded, then I agree with you that he should have. But if de Blasio is completely powerless to tell the yeshivas to do anything and it is state agencies who are not doing their oversight job, then it does seem really suspicious that YAFFED is not a lot more mad at Andrew Cuomo.
What would have happened if the report was released 18 months earlier that happened in the last 6 months? Nothing has happened since the report was released and if YAFFED and the NY Post were really concerned about those children in yeshivas, they would now be demanding that Cuomo and the state agencies that (unlike de Blasio) actually have the power to get yeshivas to comply make yeshivas comply!
Why would YAFFED demonize the powerless official who released a report 18 months late but give a pass to the state officials with all the power who could have done a real investigation but refused to do anything at all? It’s not the delayed report from a city with no oversight power that is hurting those yeshiva kids — it is the fact that the state of NY refuses to do oversight of the yeshivas even though they are the only agencies that have the power to do oversight. That has nothing to do with de Blasio. The state agencies that actually have the power to make things betters for yeshiva students would have ignored the report 18 months ago just like they ignored it when it did finally come out. Why make de Blasio the scapegoat for the state’s unwillingness to do the oversight that NYC is prohibited from doing? Because de Blasio made a horse trade to delay a report that the state would have ignored anyway in order to get something — Mayoral control — that benefitted all the students in NYC public schools?
Releasing a report on time is definitely more proper than releasing a report late. But doing no oversight at all — doing no report at all — which is what the state is doing, is much worse than releasing a report late.
Again, I retract this all if I am wrong and de Blasio and the NYC DOE do have real oversight power over yeshivas. I do not believe they do. The oversight is with the state. The power to do a real report that isn’t dependent entirely on whether the yeshivas want to cooperate is held by the state. Any report that de Blasio did was going to be toothless anyway. I certainly agree that if there were no other issues involved, de Blasio should have released that toothless report 18 months earlier. But if I knew that if de Blasio released that toothless report it would mean that Mayor control that was given to an anti-public school, pro-charter Mayor would be taken away from a Mayor because he was progressive and supported public schools and wasn’t charter-friendly enough, then I think de Blasio made the best choice of two choices — the one that hurt the fewest students and helped the most.
One thing is absolutely true. Releasing that report when YAFFED wanted it released and not 18 months later would mean the end of Mayoral control in NYC. I know people who think that Mayoral control is a bad idea would not mind, and people who think Mayoral control should not be ended just because a Mayor is too supportive of public schools would be unhappy. I would have been one of the people unhappy but I do respect the opinion of those who have the equally valid perspective that there should be no Mayoral control in NYC.
But the yeshiva report release date is entirely entwined with whether or not some politicians would vote with the pro-public school progressive Democrats or vote with the pro-charter anti-public school Republicans. de Blasio made a deal so that progressive politicians got what they wanted and Republicans did not. Without that deal, the progressives would have lost, but the only thing that YAFFED would have won would be a talking point that would have been ignored by the state oversight agencies just like they ignored it when the delayed report was finally released.
And I believe that there would have been hundreds of thousands of unhappy public school parents when they learned that the reason a progressive pro-public education Mayor didn’t have the same Mayoral control that a pro-charter, anti-union Mayor had is because the progressive pro-public education Mayor sacrificed his chance at having Mayoral control to help a group of unhappy former yeshiva students get publicity for their cause because Cuomo and the state agencies who had the power to oversee yeshivas didn’t care and the former yeshiva students hoped that having a report by de Blasio’s DOE would get the state to do their job.
Giving up Mayoral control to release a report that benefitted a small group of former Yeshiva students get publicity that just maybe (but probably not) might help them get the state oversight agencies to do their job? I would not want to make that choice, but if I did, I’d probably choose to delay the report to retain Mayoral control, too.
de Blasio’s choice meant that will of right wing Republicans who hate public schools was thwarted. Even if you disagree with his choice, it seems only fair to recognize why he made that choice. Mayoral control was at stake and de Blasio did not want to sacrifice Mayoral control for YAFFED when that report was highly unlikely to make any difference to yeshiva kids but losing Mayoral control was going to make a very big difference to 1 million NYC public school students.
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DeBlasio made a dirty deal to ignore the miseducation of thousands of children in Yeshivas, who were not taught in English, not learning science, so that he could win one crucial vote. That’s not progressive. In 2014, he agreed to pay the rent for charters, which now costs the city$100 million a year. He has quietly given the charters whatever they want. He is no progressive. He’s just another politician.
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Diane,
We just have two different perspectives. I think you are saying that you would not mind if de Blasio no longer had Mayoral control of NYC public schools and I think that would be a huge set back for progressive public education if the only Mayors who got Mayoral control were rabidly pro-charter anti-union.
You don’t think that NYC parents would be outraged if they knew that the reason the NYC public schools are no longer under Mayoral control – and all the disruption that would cause – is because de Blasio put the needs of “thousands” of yeshiva students over the needs of one million public school students?
And there are a lot of parents of all races who appreciate the efforts that de Blasio and Carranza are doing to address the segregation of NYC public schools and would not be happy that de Blasio decided that “releasing a report” that was entirely about helping a small group of former yeshiva students in their PR efforts to get the state to do its oversight job was more important to him than making public schools better for the one million students there.
Again, I think your point that de Blasio’s actions delaying the report harmed yeshiva students is entirely dependent on whether de Blasio has any control over what happens in yeshivas or any legal power to compel yeshivas to cooperate with an investigation. Do they? Who oversees yeshivas and has the legal authority to do a comprehensive investigation and then demand that yeshivas comply?
If it isn’t the city, then the real question is why is everyone blaming de Blasio for not doing the state’s job for them when de Blasio had no power to do the state’s job. de Blasio’s only power was to help YAFFED’s public relations efforts by “issuing a report” that wasn’t even comprehensive because NYC actually has no power to compel any yeshiva to participate.
Again, I do think de Blasio should try to help yeshiva students even though that isn’t his job and the city has no real power to help them. But I do not think that de Blasio should try to help yeshiva students at the expense of the one million public school students in NYC. And that is what releasing this report was.
As I said, this would be an entirely different matter if de Blasio actually had any power to change things in yeshivas but he doesn’t. The report was always just a PR effort that might — but probably would not — embarrass the state enough for it to do its job.
I don’t think that one million students in NYC public schools should be harmed because de Blasio wanted to do a favor for a group that should have been demanding oversight from the state agencies that actually had the power and oversight authority to help them.
I could look at this entirely differently. de Blasio did some good — the fact that NYC was even TRYING to look into yeshivas (despite having no legal authority to compel yeshivas to cooperate) was good for yeshiva kids and good for YAFFED.
de Blasio could have simply been like Bloomberg and apparently every single oversight agency at the state level and completely ignored YAFFED. de Blasio could have told YAFFED (without one newspaper criticizing him) “I’m sorry, you have a great point and I don’t know why the state agencies with oversight and power over yeshivas aren’t helping you. If NYC had any authority over yeshivas, I would help you but since the law makes it very clear that NYC had no authority over yeshivas and only the state has authority, you will have to go to the state.”
Instead, de Blasio did the right thing. The DOE did whatever limited investigation they could do instead of just blowing off YAFFED and telling them to go to the people at the state who had authority over yeshivas. But de Blasio was not going to sacrifice Mayoral control and hurt one million NYC public school students to do that favor for YAFFED.
If you don’t value Mayoral control then this is a scandal. If you do value Mayoral control, then you can step back and see that it was a choice between releasing this toothless report (because the DOE has no power and only the state that has the power to investigate and compel yeshivas) and giving up Mayoral control, or having Mayoral control extended.
Do you really think that de Blasio would have been doing what was right for one million NYC public school kids by sacrificing Mayoral control to help YAFFED by releasing a report that had absolutely no power to change anything at yeshivas because the city has no authority over yeshivas?
Whether or not de Blasio released that report 18 months earlier or not changed absolutely nothing for the kids in yeshivas. YAFFED is in the same position it always was — depending on NY State authorities who have all the oversight power to do their job overseeing yeshivas. That hasn’t changed because of de Blasio. Nothing is stopping any of those state agencies from doing the investigation that was always THEIR job to do — not de Blasio’s job.
But whether or not de Blasio retained Mayoral control made a huge difference in the lives of NYC public school students. To give that up just because de Blasio wanted to help YAFFED in a PR effort to compel the state to do its oversight job? That isn’t a good deal for anyone but the right wing Republicans in Albany who hate public schools and those who don’t care whether de Blasio had Mayoral control.
If you believe things would be better if de Blasio was stripped of Mayoral control by right wing Republicans in Albany, then helping yeshiva students by writing a report (since that’s the only thing de Blasio had the power to do — write a report) is something that is far more valuable than Mayoral control.
But if you think that a progressive pro-public education Mayor having the same Mayoral control that a pro-charter, anti-public school Mayor had, then you wonder why YAFFED would be demanding this help from the Mayor who had no authority instead of the state agencies who do, and you’d wonder why de Blasio was going out of his way to help YAFFED and sacrificing Mayoral control just to help YAFFED.
I respect any person who believes that de Blasio should have sacrificed having Mayoral control to issue the report to help YAFFED. But I happen to think that de Blasio made the best choice here.
I think if de Blasio had sacrificed Mayoral control to issue this report about an issue NYC has no control over, that the progressives would have screamed bloody murder and accused him of putting the needs of a “thousands” of Jewish yeshiva students (whose education is overseen by the state) over the needs of one million public school students that he is directly responsible for.
Given the choices, I think that de Blasio was right to put the needs of NYC public school students he is directly responsible for over the needs of yeshiva students who he actually has no real power to help anyway. I wish he could have done both, but that was not the reality.
This wasn’t corruption. It was political horse trading so that de Blasio and the progressive pro-public school democrats in Albany could get votes for extending Mayoral control.
And I think the real scandal would have been if de Blasio had given up Mayoral control to issue a report that he did to help YAFFED despite the de Blasio administration knowing that the NYC DOE had no authority over yeshivas anyway.
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I oppose mayoral control of the schools. I opposed it after I saw Bloomberg’s dictatorship, and I oppose it now.
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^^^”In 2014, he agreed to pay the rent for charters…”
What? de Blasio didn’t agree to pay rent. He did exactly what he promised in his campaign and publicly went up against charters and said that he was halting Mayor Bloomberg’s program of the city happily and voluntarily giving free space to charters. As a result, NYC was FORCED by the state to pay rent. And instead of standing behind him, the progressives said “oh de Blasio tried to stop charters the wrong way and it’s all his fault that now they are getting more than they asked for before de Blasio stood up to them”.
Instead of applauding de Blasio for standing up to charters,a shocking number of people — including progressives — BLAMED de Blasio because they said he should not have publicly stood up to charters and it’s his fault that charters could use that to get sympathy and get even more than they wanted.
So now de Blasio is doing exactly the right thing, which is giving the bare minimum he is legally obligated to give to charters. Which absolutely drives Eva Moskowitz nuts because she doesn’t want the bare minimum – she expects to be catered to as Bloomberg and NYC’s next Mayor will surely do. That’s why there have been multiple Success Academy staff/parent protests in front of City Hall – including recently (pre-pandemic) — with all sorts of whining that de Blasio is hurting the kids in charters. de Blasio regularly offers her the free space he is legally obligated to provide, but far more often than not that free space is not in the location she wants. But since she is being offered free space, she can’t turn the charters into victims of de Blasio as she did when he publicly went up against her.
de Blasio is public enemy #1 of NYC charters (except some of the independent ones). They, and their PR arms like the NY Post and “The74” do nothing but try to undermine him.
Charter schools allies in Albany were the ones who wanted to take Mayoral control away from de Blasio. They were largely right wing Republicans who didn’t even live in NYC, but they loved the idea of privatization of public schools (and the money they got from anti-public school pro-charter billionaires). That is what this horse trade with the yeshiva report was all about.
It was about not letting the right wing Republicans who hate public schools win a victory. That’s why I think it was a good deal.
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Hi, my name is Naftuli Moster, and I am the executive director of Yaffed. I was alerted to your comments (“NYC Public School Parent”), and while I normally don’t respond to each comment on the web, I feel compelled to do so, so that others who read it and are potentially influenced will also see my response.
I am surprised that of all times, now is the time that you are suddenly warming up to de Blasio when he is literally caught having made a disgusting deal, even as he was publicly running around saying everything is kosher and that he’s taking the issue seriously.
Your main premise is that NYC isn’t the authority to go after failing private schools, and therefore you find it suspicious that we don’t attack Governor Cuomo.
You are wrong on both counts and many of the claims you make along the way.
NYSED’s guidelines specifically empower and require local districts to enforce “substantial equivalency” in private schools.
Here’s what it says: “If a child attends a nonpublic school or is being educated at home, the board of education of the school district in which the child resides must be assured that the child is receiving instruction which is substantially equivalent to that provided in the public schools. Thus, the board’s responsibility is to the children living in the district; it has no direct authority over a nonpublic school.”
That means, the local school authority – in NYC, that’s the chancellor (ahem, mayoral control) – doesn’t dictate to private schools how they should run, but it does need to make sure that every child who attends it receives a “substantially equivalent” education.
The guidelines go on to say the following: “Once a board of education approves a resolution at a public meeting that a nonpublic school is not equivalent, the administrator of the nonpublic school and the parents of pupils attending that school should be notified in writing that the children will be considered truant if they continue to attend that school. Parents should be given a reasonable time in which to transfer their children to either a public school or another nonpublic school. At the end of that time, all transportation, textbooks, and health services should be withdrawn. If parents continue to enroll their children in a nonpublic school whose program has been determined to be not equivalent, they should then be notified that petitions will be filed in Family Court by the public school authorities to the effect that their children are truant.”
(Source: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/nonpub/guidelinesequivofinstruction.html)
So in direct contradiction to what you claim, it’s the city and other local districts that have this responsibility.
You know how else we know it’s the city’s responsibility? Because if it weren’t, the city would have said so 5 years ago. Trust me they didn’t launch an investigation out of the goodness of their heart. In fact, prior meetings and letters to city officials fell on deaf ears. Only after a complaint signed by 52 Yeshiva graduates and parents, naming 39 non-compliant Yeshivas was filed did they reluctantly launch the investigation they are supposed to under the statute.
I get that you are frustrated that the city has limitations as to what they can expect of charter schools, but I assure you if a charter school were accused of teaching only 90 minutes of secular education a day, or less, that the city would step in.
Now, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Which is why I have personally confronted former commissioner Elia on multiple occasions.
Here’s one I filmed: https://youtu.be/VDOR_xKCBNA
But guess what, although the state could have argued that each district knows exactly what to do, given the guidelines I mentioned above, the board of regents, after meeting with us, went ahead and instructed SED to clarify and strengthen the guidelines. The plan was to make inspections and reviews of private schools routine, every 5 years, so as to take the politics out of it. The state needed a justification to publish new guidelines, so it waited for the DOE to release their report. This is just one of several concrete negative consequences of the DOE’s delay to release their report.
The DOE ,as per the mayor’s deal with the Yeshiva leaders, didn’t release their report until after Simcha Felder had time to ram through an amendment that sought to weaken requirements for Yeshivas. His amendment didn’t hit the mark, so the state still retained the ability to put out new guidelines. Once the DOE finally released their interim report in August of 2018, SED released their updated guidance shortly after and cited the DOE interim report as one reason.
But all private schools banded together and filed a lawsuit claiming it violates their religion, constitutional rights, etc, and that the state violated the rules to allow public comment. The court threw out the guidelines, and the state immediately re-released them as regulations.
So you have a state literally cleaning up the mess the mayor and the DOE have left behind.
Again, we have confronted state officials on multiple occasions, and we continue to do so. In fact, if you read our press statements following the revelation of the mayor’s involvement, we immediately called on the state to move ahead with finalizing the proposed regulations.
We have also gone after Governor Cuomo almost as much as we go after de Blasio. Keep in mind, of all agencies, SED is literally the one the governor has the least direct oversight. It is overseen by the board of regents. Of course he controls their funding.
But we have called him out for his cozy relationship with Yeshiva leaders. Here’s an article in which I go after both the mayor and governor equally:
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-why-ultra-orthodox-weddings-and-funerals-persist-20200407-kakfqjavareg5it7qrhcuqgwqy-story.html
Going back to the deal. In your eyes, you believe it was a trade-off worth making. Here’s a question for you. When de Blasio was presented with that dilemma, why didn’t he tell the Yeshiva leaders that if they don’t get their henchmen in the senate to extend mayoral control, he’s going to strip them of every goodie he’d given them since getting elected? You know the goodies Emma Wolfe mentioned in those emails. Or see just a few here:
https://hamodia.com/2015/01/01/de-blasio-brings-simcha-eichenstein-city-hall/
https://hamodia.com/2017/10/19/mayor-de-blasio-city-issue-vouchers-child-care-assistance-working-families/
https://hamodia.com/2015/08/19/de-blasio-administration-releases-4500-half-day-pre-k-slots/
Or why didn’t de Blasio hold a press conference and tell the public he was being blackmailed?
It didn’t have to be either or. But de Blasio simply didn’t care. He was being blackmailed by old buddies who helped get him elected in the first place.
An investigation that could have taken 90 days was dragged out by the city to 4 & 1/2 years, and you are thinking conspiratorial that this is some conservative plot.
Have you thought about the amount of money that could be injected into the public schools if every Yeshiva that failed were stripped of their funding 4 years ago and that funding redirected to the public school system?
And if you think Yeshivas don’t get much funding, here’s some news for you. Many Hasidic Yeshivas’ budgets are 2/3 government funds (federal, state, and local). See our report: https://yaffed.org/resources/
So do me a favor, turn your anger where it belongs: on the mayor and Agudath Israel.
#YeshivaGate
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Diane,
If you oppose Mayoral control, this is the worst possible deal in the world! I can understand why you would be disgusted with de Blasio as he is hurting kids in yeshivas to do something that you also think is a bad idea.
I may come to agree with you about Mayoral control being a bad idea that should be ended, but I’m not quite there yet. I guess I would like to know what replaces it and whether it means there are expensive board of education races (and would every district be run separately?) and how that works.
NYC is so vast – it’s almost unique as a school system that is larger than many state’s school system. I see the problems with Mayoral control, and the dangers, but also wonder if having an elected board in a city that is this vast would mean that no one ends up getting held responsible by voters for their bad decisions. On the other hand, I can see where a democratically elected board could be much more responsive to parent issues.
But it would be bad if it ended up with things like Orthodox Jews getting seats on boards because they have a large voting bloc and they get power over public schools that their kids don’t even attend. Which caused all the problems in East Ramapo. But I guess they did eventually get caught.
Anyway, as you can see I don’t know where I stand on Mayoral control, but for now I think it is a good thing for de Blasio to use to be able to undo some of the damage caused by Bloomberg’s mayoral control. But I understand why you oppose it and you are probably right to oppose it.
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Bloomberg built up a massive dictatorial, unaccountable regime that stifled the voices of parents and communities. Klein surrounded himself with MBAs who had no education experience other than having gone to school. The regime was high-handed and indifferent to public opinion. Actually hostile to public opinion. They loved to break things and people. This is not democratic public education.
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Thank you to Naftuli Moster for the interesting reply. You brought up some excellent points.
Do I understand you to say that you believe that legally the state had no authority to do anything about yeshivas in NYC until de Blasio did an investigation and issued a report?
And do I understand you to say that you believe that legally, de Blasio has full legal authority to investigate yeshivas and compel yeshivas to cooperate with the investigation? And that full legal authority to investigate yeshivas resides only in the board of education or (under Mayoral control) a Mayor and the state is powerless to do any investigation itself or, in fact, do anything at all about yeshivas because they cannot act without de Blasio?
Isn’t it true that if de Blasio had forced the yeshivas to do anything they didn’t want to do, they would have simply taken him to court since he had no authority over them? They don’t have to cooperate with any de Blasio investigations if they don’t want to cooperate, correct? They can just take it to court and then appeal if they don’t like the decision.
You do have a totally legitimate suggestion that de Blasio could have done what he did with charters and actually threaten to withhold a freebie that the Bloomberg administration had given yeshivas until they all changed their ways. Given that when de Blasio did that to charters, it ended up with charters getting MORE from the state and the state punishing him for getting involved with charters that he had no authority over, wouldn’t it have been a terrible idea all around for de Blasio to make those threats that you suggest?
If de Blasio had turned the yeshivas into victims and they ended up getting MORE than they previously received, would you have done what progressives have done and blamed de Blasio for making yeshivas look like victims so that they got even more than before? Would you have second guessed what de Blasio did and told him that he should have known that being “mean” to yeshiva children would end up making things much worse?
or would you have said “I don’t care if the outcome is exactly the opposite of what we wanted, because de Blasio ‘did the right thing’ and even if i now means that yeshivas have far more power to do whatever they want, we’re just happy that the Mayor did the right thing even if the situation is even worse?”
de Blasio tried to do something for a group of severely disabled and very poor public school children, but the charters didn’t want him to do it and they were able to turn de Blasio’s concern for severely disabled children into “hurting charter school kids” and they got a lot more than they would have if de Blasio had done nothing. So it is very likely that your suggestions where he takes a hard line with yeshivas would turn in “de Blasio is hurting kids in yeshivas”. He would be accused of being an anti-Semite instead of a racist. And the yeshivas would win the PR battle and get more.
de Blasio seems to be one of the few politicians doing anything about yeshivas, even if it is far from enough.
But if giving up Mayoral control of NYC public schools was the price he would have to pay to have an outcome for yeshivas that (arguably) at best would have led to court cases and a long drawn out legal process that could have simply reinforced that it was the state that had authority over yeshivas, should he have given up Mayoral control for that?
I certainly understand why people who think Mayoral control is a bad idea would say yes. But that delayed report did come out. And I still don’t understand what help your organization is getting from the state to regulate yeshivas is right now. Are you still saying that it is STILL all in de Blasio’s hands and he alone can now change things in yeshivas and has all the power?
A report was issued, albeit it was late and you have every right to be angry about that. But the report is there.
Is the ball now in Mayor de Blasio’s hands or is it in the state’s hands? Do you expect a court case if anything more than issuing a report is done, like actually taking action to order yeshivas to change?
In fact, I thought that during the refusal to vaccinate/measles outbreak, the reason the city could get involved was through the Health Department only — because it was a health issue the health department could make orders.
And even that resulted in a lawsuit!
I realize there are many very thoughtful and intelligent people, including Diane Ravitch, who don’t think Mayoral control is a good idea. And if I believed that, I would have been fine with the Mayor sacrificing that Mayoral control to release the report.
But if there is any value to Mayoral control, which I believe there is, then it seems a very big price to pay to sacrifice that for an outcome that still isn’t clear. The report is out there but who can order yeshivas to do something they don’t want to do?
de Blasio is term limited, so I think it would be a good idea for YAFFED to demand that every candidate running for Mayor publicly pledge that they will force yeshivas to comply with YAFFED’s desires (which I agree yeshivas should do), and YAFFED and the NY Post should be attacking any candidate who isn’t going on the record loudly and publicly declaring that as Mayor, they are willing to wage war against yeshivas – if that it what it takes – to make sure yeshivas comply with the regulations.
Back in 2013 I voted for de Blasio in the NYC Mayoral primary because he promised to stop the Bloomberg free giveaway to charters. I was thrilled when de Blasio kept that promise and started putting the needs of severely disabled children in public schools over very rich charter schools that weren’t supposed to be given free space.
de Blasio kept his promise. Sure it backfired and it made charters claim the mantle of victimhood, and they got even more. But I have always respected de Blasio for trying to do something despite it backfiring.
Unfortunately, nobody else seemed to appreciate it and suddenly everyone was second guessing de Blasio and blaming him for the outcome. I suspect that the lesson he learned is that there is a big political cost and in that case, it was the one million students in NYC public schools who were paying the cost because de Blasio did the right thing and kept a promise.
So I suppose I am more sympathetic than you are about the dilemma de Blasio faced given that this was a case where one million NYC public school kids were going to pay the price for de Blasio trying to help YAFFED.
(Again, those who would gladly have Mayoral control ended would view that as a plus).
But if, as it seems now, de Blasio releasing the report when you wanted simply led to lawsuits, delays, and a court decision that the NYC DOE has no authority to tell yeshivas what to do, what would have been gained that was worth giving up Mayoral control and plunging NYC public schools and the million students in them into an (arguably) much worse situation?
I know the report should have been released earlier, but it was released. So what happens now and who has the power to compel yeshivas to change?
(And why doesn’t anyone care about the yeshivas outside NYC but in NY State!)
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Catholic Schools could not and do not try to get away with not teaching academics!!! How is this possible? How do they receive HS diplomas from Yeshiva that is equivalent to a comprehensive HS curriculum certificate of mastery?
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There are many Jewish Day Schools that are like those Catholic schools where students get a superb secular education along with a religious education.
The yeshivas are more like the Christian schools that will only teach creationism. Or perhaps teach an anti-gay curriculum. The parents who send their kids there are true believers who believe their child is getting absolutely the most wonderful education possible. They are willing to pay tuition for this wonderful education. (Thankfully, in NY State there are no tuition vouchers that go to yeshivas, although like other religious and private schools, their education is subsidized in other ways, like free transportation, etc.)
I have no idea what kind of diploma the students get but clearly they don’t take or pass Regents’ exams. Maybe they don’t even care whether they get a diploma since the graduates mostly stay in their own society. I believe that YAFFED was started by former students who walked away from that society, and learned that the education they got was incredibly substandard for living outside of their community.
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Toni Yes–I’ve been around Catholic schools for a half-century; and in my unscientific experience, they’ve all taught to secular educational and State-mandated concerns, liberal-arts, and critical-thinking values. The difference is that they require their students to follow the religious rituals and they overtly teach moral values associated with their history of Christ’s teachings. My guess is that many Jewish and Islam, and religious-oriented other schools do the same with regard to their own contexts. CBK
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