Officials in New York have informed two Hasidic schools in New York City that they no longer qualify for state aid because they’re not providing an adequate education to children.
The New York State Education Department wrote to Yeshiva Bnei Shimon Yisroel of Sopron and Talmud Torah of Kasho, both all-boys schools, directing them to inform parents that the schools are “no longer deemed a school, which provides compulsory education fulfilling the requirements of Article 65 of the Education Law,” reported Jewish News Syndicate. The move will effectively shut down the schools.
New York law requires that private schools offer an education that is “substantially equivalent” to what public schools provide. State officials have been cracking down on yeshivas, some of which are accused of focusing solely on Torah studies and slighting secular topics such as math and English. As a result, some students graduate with a limited education and are unable to find work.
The two yeshivas, state officials said, were given the opportunity to respond to the charges against them but ignored previous warnings and refused to meet with state officials.
“In December 2024, the department wrote to noncompliant schools, inviting them to meet and urging them to re-engage in the process to avoid the consequences associated with final negative determinations,” Rachel Connors, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said in a statement. “Schools that did not re-engage have been deemed schools that do not provide compulsory education.”
The state funding in question concerns mostly transportation aid and textbook loan programs, as well as aid for school lunch programs. Parents have been advised to enroll their children in public schools or private institutions that meet state requirements.
The New York Times reported that state officials have been working for a decade to bring the yeshivas into compliance with the law, but this is the first time yeshivas have been cited for failing to offer an adequate education.
In 2015, several graduates of the yeshivas filed complaints with the Education Department, asserting that the education they received left them ill-equipped to function in the secular world. The Times reported that officials visited one of the schools in 2019 and “did not observe any instruction, taught in English, in the core academic subjects of English, history, mathematics and science.”