Yeshivas, not families, must be responsible for teaching the basics – New York Daily News

An upstate judge’s recent ruling on substantially equivalent education for nonpublic schools is highly problematic for Hasidic families. On the one hand, the decision by Albany state Supreme Court Justice Christina L. Ryba reinforces the century-old mandate that every child in the state is required to get an education. On the other hand, it requires Hasidic parents to fulfill a task that the vast majority of them will be completely unable to do: ensure that their children learn English, science, math and social studies in a manner that is substantially equivalent to the education provided by local public schools.

As I contemplate this current state of affairs, I am reminded of my own experience as a young Hasidic mother enrolling her children in school.

Twenty years ago, almost to the day, I moved back to New York State from Israel with my seven children: three girls and four boys. I was 29 years old and had spent the last 11 years supporting my husband in his occupation as a full time Torah scholar. Like many of my peers, I married at the age of 18.

When we moved back to the town of Monsey in Rockland County, our first order of business was enrolling our children in schools. As Hasidic parents, our sole consideration was that the yeshiva’s rules, students and teachers would match our level of stringent religious observance. We believed that our job as parents was to ensure that our children learn within the most observant setting as possible. We trusted the rabbis of our community to uphold this standard. We were unaware of New York’s Education Law section 3204 that states that our children — like all children in New York State — are required to receive a secular education that is substantially equivalent to that offered by local public schools.

Even if we would have thought to inquire about the schools’ curricula, we would have had no idea what to ask as neither of us had completed our formal education. I attended, but never graduated, high school and my husband had received no secular education past the eighth grade. A native Yiddish speaker, he left school barely able to speak English, only learning it as an adult.

Fully trusting, it never occurred to us that our childrens’ schools might one day be considered institutions that are failing to provide a secular education and that it would be our responsibility to ensure our children got this very education. We paid tuition and a yellow school bus picked up our children each morning and brought them home in the evening. What more proof did we need that we were doing right as parents?

Yet, in a strange twist, the ruling by Ryba places the onus for receiving a substantially-equivalent secular education squarely on the heads of the parents, exempting the yeshivas entirely. She ruled that “…the statutory scheme places the burden for ensuring a child’s education squarely on the parent not the school” and “[t]he only penalties for noncompliance authorized… are the imposition of fines and/or penalties upon a parent…” citing section 3233 of the Education Law.

To say that I am concerned by this legal decision is an understatement. The tragic truth is that the vast majority of Hasidic parents are entirely unable to help educate their children as they are severely lacking in education themselves, with many being functionally illiterate in English. Many Hasidic men and boys cannot fill out a simple form at the doctor’s office nor conduct a conversation in English. Asking them to oversee the acquisition of a substantially-equivalent secular education for their children is not only unrealistic, it is impossible.

Though some families hire tutors for their children, this is severely frowned upon by the community and is often done secretly. In most homes Yiddish, not English, is the spoken language. I wonder how familiar Ryba is with this community. I wonder if she understands that, because of the strict control of news of the outside world, many Hasidic parents will not even know about the ramifications of this ruling. This puts an undue burden and unfair expectation on them, many of whom have attended the very yeshivas that their children currently attend.

Though the case clarifies that providing a substantially equivalent education is not a violation of religious or parental freedom, and is constitutionally sound, it also states that the yeshivas, or any nonpublic school, cannot be compelled to provide the required education. Essentially, this ruling gives permission for them to carry on with business as usual, continuing to deprive their students of instruction in basic English, science, math and social studies while availing themselves of generous federal and state funds. It makes a mockery of the hard work of those who have labored for the better part of a decade to fix New York’s broken Hasidic school system.

Frankly, I’m not sure who is more victimized by Ryba’s ruling: the parents, most of whom are financially strapped already as they have paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition to schools that they trusted to educate their kids, or the kids themselves, who will become “orphans” of a system that seems to be passing the responsibility for their education onto parents who are literally clueless. If they fail, as they surely will, they can be fined and possibly jailed.

We are grateful that the state has recently appealed Ryba’s ruling and we look forward to our children receiving the education they deserve and the parents being protected. As the executive director of Yaffed, a nonprofit that advocates for improved education in New York’s Hasidic and Haredi yeshivas, and as the mother of a child still attending a failing NYC yeshiva in accordance with a custody arrangement mandated by Family Court, I stand ready to testify to the untenable situation that Ryba’s ruling would create: Hasidic parents in danger of fines and imprisonment for the crime of truancy, children deprived of essential education, the blind leading the blind.

As the school year winds down, I am calling for a common-sense solution to the well-documented problem of New York’s failing Hasidic yeshivas. The approval of the new regulations this past fall in Albany was an important step in the right direction, requiring these schools to clean up their act, educate their students, and provide proof that they are performing on par with local public schools. Ryba’s decision undermines all of that by placing the burden on the parents.

As a mother of 10 and an activist, I implore the justices and judges of New York to rule in favor of the Hasidic children of New York State and restore the hard-won state education regulations so that this next generation avails itself of the right to a secular education, guaranteed under a venerable, century-old state law.

In other words, let’s not set the clock back 100 years.

Weber, a public speaker, writer and activist, is the executive director of Yaffed, which advocates for education justice in the Hasidic community.