NY Regents Unanimously Approve New Regulations for Private Schools

By Yehudit Garmaise

NY private schools are now required to prove that their curricula are “at least substantially equivalent” to the secular courses offered in public schools after the State Board of Regents’ Tuesday’s vote.

To prove “substantial equivalency,” private schools are now required to allow their curricula to be “assessed by local school authorities,” (LSA) or to provide Regents exams.

Although the LSA were originally thought to be teachers from nearby public schools, NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks and local schools boards will weigh in on whether yeshivas provide curricula that are “substantially equivalent.”

Orthodox Jewish communities feel fearful of the new regulations, however, in some ways the new regulations might be less invasive than what the SED proposed in late 2019. Before the pandemic, the state proposing to require yeshivas to provide four to seven hours a day of secular subjects, which is more than even the most modern Orthodox Jewish schools are able to provide along with half-days of limudei kodesh classes.

In addition, yeshivas might be able to establish educational accrediting agencies that best understand the methods and texts used by yeshivas.

What is most ominous, strange, and alarming about the SED’s new regulations is that the state will now consider truant any children who attend schools that do not meet either option, and their parents could be fined and eventually jailed.

Although the SED began creating specific regulations, which have gone through several drafts, to define substantial equivalency in 2015, the NY law that private schools must provide educations that “substantially equivalent” to public schools was passed in the late 19th Century.

Like many laws that use vague language that is open to interpretation, the “substantial equivalency” law before now never provided specifics as to what that would mean.

Without a carefully expressed definition of “substantial equivalence,” private schools were not beholden to any particular curricula, although authorities could investigate schools that generated complaints.

When asked for input on the proposed regulations, 350,000 yeshiva students, graduates, and parents flooded the SED with letters that praised their educations, their teachers’ methods, and the texts they learned and opposed the state’s inference.

After fielding five years of complaints from a minority group of yeshiva graduates who feel resentful that they did not receive a more robust secular education, the State Education Department began working to formulate specific regulations to define “substantial equivalency.”

While the parents of yeshiva students always felt that they were free to send their children to schools of their choosing, activists and liberal journalists mounted years of one-sided arguments that Chassidic schools not only inadequately prepare students to support themselves and their families and contribute to their communities, but perpetuate abuse, poverty, and helplessness.

While many yeshiva graduates create thriving businesses, work in countless meaningful and creative ways, teach, volunteer, and attend college and graduate school, those successful yeshiva students’ views were not considered, nor aired in the decade-long debate.

In the end, the “squeaky wheel” got the most attention, and the malcontents’ voices dominated and were infinitely repeated by the secular press, which neglected to tell any positive perspective on the yeshiva system.

Among the arguments of the 350,000 supporters of yeshivas who wrote the SED was the little understood idea that yeshivas offer environments, teachers, and traditions that are much better, more productive, and provide more emotional and physical safety than what is offered in public schools.

According to most of the letter-writers who supported yeshivas, graduates of yeshivas are taught how to live proud Jewish lives that are productive, successful, meaningful, and happy.