By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh

A prominent advocate for Jewish Day Schools has accused New York education officials of discriminating against Yeshivas and Jewish students by restricting their ability to provide instruction in Hebrew.   As reported by the NY Post, Brooklyn Law School professor Aaron Twerski alleged that while the NY education allows others to be taught in languages other than English, Hebrew has not been approved as one of those languages.

“It’s a double standard,” said Twerski, whose children and grandchildren attend yeshivas in NY.  Twerski said that NYS approved some 200 “dual language schools” offered by NYC’s Department of Education for public school students who want to learn a second language, but failed to recognize yeshivas and grant them approval to provide instruction in Hebrew.  “Discrimination is taking place. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not but that’s the result of the policy,” he told The Post.  “It’s blatantly unconstitutional,” he added. “If the state doesn’t voluntarily change the policy, the court will change it. Not only does the state allow dual language instruction in the public schools, they encourage it.”

Last Fall, Yeshiva advocates filed a lawsuit contesting new NYS requirements imposed requiring private schools to provide a “substantially equivalent” curriculum to that which is taught at public schools.  Twerski and other advocates maintain that under the new rules, yeshivas students should be allowed to be taught in Hebrew, just as public school kids in bilingual programs can be taught in other languages.

Per the Post, the advocates point to comments made by a top state Education Department official as proof of the double standard.  At a taped Nov. 2 conversation with school district officials in West Nyack, SED Official David Frank was asked by a local public educator, “Even in our public school bilingual programs, we often teach Math or Science or Social Studies in a language other than English … So I assume, if we do that in our public schools, that would be comparable in our non-public schools.”  In that recorded conversation, the teacher said she was “confused” about the English-language instruction requirement in the rules for private schools.

Frank had responded, “So that provision of the instruction in the core subjects being taught in English really pains me. I don’t think it is educational best practice… This is one difference between the substantial equivalence regulations and what happens in district [public] schools.”  Twersky, who wrote a recent column in The City Journal, said that Frank’s comments openly disprove an affidavit submitted in the lawsuit by State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa, which said that the rules on language instruction apply equally to both public and private schools.  “They have misled the court,” Twerski claimed, referring to the state’s officials.

The controversy over whether students in yeshivas are provided adequate secular instruction in core subjects such as English, math and science has continued to be a source of debate for over a decade.  In September 2022, the New York State Board of Regents approved stricter new rules to ensure that Hasidic Jewish schools are teaching basic subjects such as English and math and providing a secular curriculum that is “substantially equivalent” to public schools.  “They’re saying instruction can only be given in English in private schools but not in public schools,” said Avi Schick said, a lawyer representing Jewish schools in that ongoing litigation.