YAFFED Files Federal Lawsuit Against New York Governor, NYS Education Commissioner, Board of Regents Chancellor Alleging Unconstitutional “Felder Amendment” Denies Yeshiva Students Right to Basic Education

One of the most substantive, alarming  press releases I have ever read.... Leonie Haimson

Funny how when people think of welfare they see certain people of color but not Hasidic. I wonder to what extent the demands for people on welfare to work will include them. Does public education money flow to these communities? Hell yes.

I worked in Williamsburg where the local Hasidic had effective control of the local school board with their voting block - they had 3 of the 9 seats and allied with the Greenpoint people to screw the 95% of the kids of color in the public schools in the district. They established a bi-lingual Yiddish school which is still in operation. At one point $7 million disappeared into the vapor and the District office was invaded by FBI -- the blame went to the two District Supt who both died of cancer before the judgement. The Hasidic community got off scot free. The early 70s were the earliest days of my activism and I attended all the monthly school board meetings and we raised issues at these meetings and the people running the operation were not happy -- we even worked with the community in school board elections where I learned you could not beat the machine with the Hasidic block vote.

Here are a few excerpts from the press release which you can read in full below the break.

...... the [Simcha Felder] amendment creates a carve-out that relieves ultra-Orthodox yeshivas from following the rigorous standards set in state education laws for all other non-public schools, these yeshivas continue to benefit from hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars annually.  Federal money flows to yeshivas through programs such as Title I, II, and III; Head Start and child care contracts; the E-rate telecommunications program; and food programs. For example, non-public schools in the largely Hasidic neighborhood of East Ramapo received approximately $835 per student in federal Title funding in 2016-17. In addition, state and city funding is provided to yeshivas through Academic Intervention Services (AIS), Nonpublic School Safety Equipment (NPSE), Mandated Services Aid (MSA), the Comprehensive Attendance Program (CAP), EarlyLearn, Universal Pre-K, child care vouchers, and New York City Council discretionary funds.

Approximately 45% of Hasidic households in New York are poor and another 18% are near poor.  In the largely Hasidic area of Williamsburg, the median household income is $21,502, compared to the Brooklyn median of $46,958 and the city median of $52,737. Hasidic communities in Brooklyn have a greater percentage of families receiving cash assistance, food stamps, public health care coverage, and Section 8 housing vouchers, as compared to Brooklyn and New York City as a whole.  For example, 33.8% of Borough Park residents utilize Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps; in Williamsburg, the number is an astounding 51.8%. The Brooklyn total is 23.8%, while 20.4% of all New York City residents receive SNAP food stamps.

https://www.yaffed.org/lawsuit1
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 23, 2018
Contact: Anat Gerstein, anat@anatgerstein.com,
             Lynsey Billet, lynsey@anatgerstein.com,

YAFFED Files Federal Lawsuit Against New York Governor, NYS Education Commissioner, Board of Regents Chancellor Alleging Unconstitutional “Felder Amendment” Denies Yeshiva Students Right to Basic Education

Hundreds of Millions of Taxpayer Dollars Support Schools that “Graduate” Students with Few Skills; Poverty Rates and Public Assistance Sky High

NYSUT Opposes Bill on Evals and Flanagan Sells Out Education to Yeshiva Interests

At first glance, this appears to repeal the teacher evaluation law APPR, increases charter school cap by 100, and appears to undercut Commissioner's authority over non-public (read Yeshiva) schools... Leonie Haimson

Aside from the awful stuff about raising the charter cap which would do a lot more to undermine union teacher jobs than the eval law repeal.

Here is the NYSUT response:

Sen. Flanagan must think we were born yesterday. The Republican State Senate majority leader showed again last night how little he and his GOP colleagues respect public school teachers. Instead of passing S.8301, a clean bill with 55 sponsors in the Senate to reduce testing and fix the evaluation system, Sen. Flanagan introduced a bill that ties APPR to millions of dollars for the charter industry and his political donors and to loopholes for private schools. This is just another distraction and a stall tactic. Our message has not changed. The Senate must pass S.8301, with NO STRINGS attached. Reject Sen. Flanagan's gambit. Tell your senator to demand the majority leader allow a vote on S.8301 now. The vast majority of Senate Republicans joined all the Democrats to co-sponsor S.8301, our bill to fix New York's flawed and unfair teacher performance review law, weeks ago. Yet for all their talk about supporting it, Senate Republicans failed to even allow an up or down vote. They could have done it, but they didn't. Reject Sen. Flanagan's gambit. Tell your senator to demand the majority leader allow a vote on S.8301 now. We have been working for years to return control over teacher evaluations to local school districts and teachers. Thanks to you, we are closer than ever to fixing New York's flawed and unfair teacher performance review law. Our bill passed the Assembly 133-1. Now the Senate needs to honor teachers by voting on S.8301 now, with no strings attached. Let's get this done now! In solidarity, Andrew Pallotta NYSUT President P.S.:   Tell your state senator to reject Sen. Flanagan's ill-conceived, compromised APPR proposal and to pass S.8301 today.

Leonie has been on the case of the shameful response to the lack of education in yeshivas which get money to teacher certain subjects but don't.

See the video I shot of the YAFFED press conference: Video: YAFFED Press Conf - De Blasio, Farina, Felder Slammed
https://vimeo.com/263492801

Here are Leonie Haimson's comments on her must read nyceducationnews listserve:

New Flanagan bill re yeshivas

Here is Yaffed’s ceo, Naftali Moser’s analysis of the Yeshiva portion of the Flanagan bill/

Video: YAFFED Press Conf - De Blasio, Farina, Felder Slammed

I reported on the upcoming press conference on Thursday -

YAFFED Press Conf to Protest Sham Rules for Hasidic and Orthodox Schools

Leonie Haimson was there as was former teacher and now city councilman Danny Dromm (head of the powerful finance committee) and David Bloomfield. And a now former IDC Senator whose name I won't mention - our pal Robert Jackson is primarying her.

Here is the complete video I took. I have some experience with the Hasidic political machine, having worked in District 14 in Williamsburg where they used to elect 3 out of the 9 members of the school board despite having no kids in the public schools - well some kids, but that a long a sordid story. They could have elected all 9 members if they wanted to. The deals made were astounding and as a Jew it was especially disconcerting to see how the 95% of the kids of color in the district were marginalized. Eventually $7 million dollars was "disappeared" illegally, which led to an invasion of the district office by the FBI and the US Postal Service. Both Superintendents died at an early age from cancer so there was a convenient excuse to put the blame on them and no one was every prosecuted. I could go on - but here we have former students at these school talking about how they were denied an education as the schools violated state ed laws which apply to every school. I asked if they get money from the state and city and he said YES - so these schools are not free to do what they want.

By the way - in our earliest years of teaching many of my friends had after school jobs in these schools to teach secular subjects and they said it was brutal work -- the kids disinterested and harder to teach than the public school kids.

These Hasidic communities have very high welfare rates - with Kiryas Joel, New York being the poorest in the nation - no talk about welfare queens - maybe kings in this case.

https://vimeo.com/263492801