There have been a few notable developments in this area, and perhaps inevitably, hearsay and rumor have done their part to introduce some confusion about what has changed and what has not. One even hears murmurings to the effect that the crisis has subsided and all’s now well on the yeshivah front, or, alternatively, that the issue was always overblown, a nonstory from the start.

Halevai. The guidelines continue to present an immense challenge to the deserved educational autonomy of the yeshivos and their parent and student bodies. That challenge is only exacerbated by an absence of productive communication between SED and the yeshivah community that remains deeply troubling.

To put matters plainly, there are two overarching problems: One is of policy, resulting in unwarranted governmental control; the other is of process, with the State still failing to engage constructively with the nonpublic school community. The guidelines are an unprecedented, unfair, and perhaps even legally baseless attempt to entangle religion and state and micromanage the education of yeshivah students, thereby denying their parents the autonomy vouchsafed them by the Constitution.

In the normal course of things, it’s to be expected that differences of opinion and misunderstandings may arise between governmental agencies and the public they serve. These hurdles need not be insurmountable — provided that on both sides there is goodwill and an interest in resolving the issues in contention.

In the current predicament, however, government has unilaterally imposed an unprecedentedly drastic and invasive regulatory regime, while simultaneously adopting an inflexible posture. It avoided the public process and consultation that the law requires when formulating new regulations, and continues to eschew consultation with affected parties. That combination signals a dysfunctional regulatory process, resulting in an unconscionable deprivation of the rights of New York’s citizens of faith.

Regarding hours of instruction, there’s both good and bad news. The good news is that SED has revised its guidelines to state that the mandatory units of daily secular study are not more than one per grade for core subjects, namely English, Math, Social Studies and Science, resulting in 17.5, rather than 35, required hours of required instruction per week for grades seven–eight, and that unlike what the guidelines previously stipulated, only grades seven and eight need to meet the units-of-study hourly requirements, but not grades five and six.

The bad news is that since the vast majority of yeshivos hold secular studies classes only four days per week, the revised regulatory requirement of 17.5 weekly hours of instruction means the State is still demanding the infeasible level of four and one-third daily hours of instruction.

In every other way, however, the guidelines remain as unworkable, overreaching, and misguided as before. To recap: They enumerate, for the first time ever, specific subjects that must be taught instead of a generalized requirement for nonpublic schools to provide a substantially equivalent education to that of local public schools.

Many of these mandated subjects are of the sort that no fair-minded person would consider an indispensable part of a basic education, such as visual arts, music, dance, and theater. That SED would impose the teaching of these subjects on schools struggling mightily to find enough hours in the school day to support a dual curriculum of Jewish and secular studies, beggars belief.

Curiously, SED’s latest version of its guidelines, issued subsequent to the public outcry of the statewide nonpublic school community, actually adds new, equally nonessential subjects — media arts, career development, and occupational studies — to the list of mandated areas of study.

One of the most ominous aspects of the SED guidelines is its placement of the nonpublic schools under the direct jurisdiction of local public school boards, granting the latter the power to declare the former noncompliant with the state education law and effectively force them to dissolve. Inspectors representing local school boards will be required to observe and evaluate classes in yeshivos to pass judgment on the competency of teachers and the sufficiency of the curriculum.

Moreover, in their November 27, 2018 letter to SED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia following up on their meeting with her, Rav Elya Brudny and Rav Yisroel Reisman queried, inter alia, whether the requirement for local school boards to conduct reviews of a nonpublic school’s teachers, means that they will attempt “to assess the competence of the Jewish studies faculty if a yeshivah has incorporated the State learning standards into its Jewish studies curriculum?” To date, the commissioner has not responded to their letter, raising the prospect that SED may be contemplating the unthinkable: assessments by public school officials of not only secular studies teachers but of schools’ limudei kodesh staff as well.

Beyond the dubious legality of a regulatory regime subordinating religious schools to the control of public school officials, it is a certain recipe for disaster. Conflicts of interest will proliferate and fierce inter-communal strife will ensue, all fueled by competition for limited resources and anti-religious bias, disguised or otherwise. It is wrongheaded in the extreme and will amount to a political, ethical, and legal nightmare of the highest order.

But all of these mandates — the impossibly long hours of instruction; the foisting of culturally inappropriate, religiously detrimental, and educationally irrelevant course material on grade-schoolers; and the placing of the fate of religious schools in the hands of rival public institutions — are but concrete manifestations of the deeper illogic that underpins these guidelines: the notion that government may, and indeed should, intrude on and constrain the rights of parents to have their children educated in the culturally and religiously appropriate environment of their choice.

The Archdiocese of New York put the matter well:

Private schools exist for a reason — parents don’t want to send their kids to public schools. Education is more than just lesson plans and test scores. Every school has a culture of its own that is a profound influence over the children. Religious schools reinforce the faith in every activity, including in the teaching of secular subjects. Moral values are taught not just by instruction, but by example. Religious parents want their kids to grow up in that kind of environment….

In sum, the crisis precipitated by the SED guidelines seems nearly as far from resolution as ever, and the need for a public hue and cry and the pursuit of every possible avenue of shtadlanus remains as urgent as ever.

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 742. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com