Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spent several days visiting New York schools — and much to the finger-wagging of a critical media, she skipped the district-run schools and chose a yeshivah and an Orthodox Jewish high school instead.

DeVos, a former businesswoman and philanthropist, is a strong supporter of school choice. So when President Trump nominated her for the position of education secretary, the leadership at Agudath Israel of America was delighted.

“From the day she was nominated,” says Rabbi A.D. Motzen, Agudah’s national director for state relations, “we have consistently commended the fact that she has always focused on the success of all students, including those who choose private schools.”

Secretary DeVos spent over three hours on Tuesday at Manhattan High School for Girls, where she engaged with the students and faculty.

“She was very impressed with the level of education and our commitment to excellence in both limudei kodesh and general studies,” said Mrs. Tzivia Yanofsky, principal at Manhattan High. “She saw that the girls were dignified and committed to the ideals of Yiddishkeit.”

Mrs. Yanofsky and general studies principal Estee Friedman-Stefansky led DeVos on a tour of classes in session, and also hosted the secretary for a luncheon with a group of girls. A highlight of the tour, says Mrs. Yanofsky, was a genealogy class, taught by Mrs. Chanie Gottlieb, where girls explore their family roots and trace their lineage. DeVos shared with the girls that her own grandparents in Holland were directly responsible for saving Jews during the Holocaust.

On Wednesday, DeVos visited Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway. During her tour, she visited a third-grade class learning about the shivas haminim, a fourth-grade poetry class, a sixth grade Gemara class, the yeshivah’s Literacy Library, and the high school’s vocational training program. She also sat in on a chemistry class, visited the yeshivah’s beis medrash with its vibrant kol Torah, and stopped at the Rabenstein Learning Center — the yeshivah’s state-of-the-art resource room.

The tour ended with a roundtable discussion, where DeVos met with parents, teachers, board members, and alumni. “We are very proud to have been chosen,” says Rabbi Moshe Benoliel, the school’s director of communications. “And she was clearly very impressed. She indicated that whatever we have here is unique and she’s never seen anything quite like this.”

Yet not everyone was thrilled with the secretary’s New York City visit. Many in the mainstream media criticized DaVos for snubbing the city’s vast public school system. A Washington Post op-ed stated, “Education secretary Betsy DeVos visited the nation’s largest public school district, one responsible for educating 1.1 million students annually, and didn’t bother to check out even one public school.”

But according to Rabbi Motzen, “Secretary DeVos has visited many public and charter schools in other cities, and I assume she will be back in New York many times during her tenure to visit other schools. We are proud that she chose to visit two of our community’s excellent schools while she was here.”

DeVos is well known for being sympathetic to those who choose private school education for their children. While addressing a group at the Alfred E. Smith Foundation — a Catholic charity — last week, she said that “parents hold the inalienable right to decide what learning environment best meets their children’s individual needs.”

The Agudah, says Rabbi Motzen, had in fact worked together with DeVos well before she became head of the US Department of Education. “We had previously worked with her and the organizations she led on school choice advocacy for more than a decade. Those efforts have generated tens of millions of dollars in scholarships to thousands of families in our own community.”

Oblivious to the controversy, the girls at Manhattan High School were delighted to have been chosen to spend quality time with a high-ranking member of the Trump administration.

“For our part,” says Mrs. Yanofsky, “it was a real opportunity to be mekadesh Sheim Shamayim.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 711)