TODAY: Yaffed Executive Director, Naftuli Moster, To Attend Board of Regents Meeting

NEW YORK, NY (06/03/2019) (readMedia)-- Today, the NYS Board of Regents will commence the first of a two day meeting at which they will discuss the substantial equivalency guidelines for non-public schools, among other topics. Yaffed Executive Director, Naftuli Moster will attend the meeting and be available for press.

The meeting begins at 9AM at the NYS Education Department:

89 Washington Ave

Albany, NY 12234

On Friday, the Board released updated guidelines after an state supreme court judge struck down the previous ones in response to litigation from Ultra Orthodox yeshivas. Responding to the revised guildelines last week, Moster said:

"We are deeply concerned that NYSED's approach plays into the hands of groups like Agudath Israel which for years have resisted any oversight of yeshivas at all, while lobbying for millions of taxpayer dollars and subjecting students to gross educational neglect," said Naftuli Moster, Executive Director of YAFFED. "Instead of acting quickly to implement emergency regulations, NYSED has chosen a lengthy process which all but guarantees that in the 2019-2020 school year, tens of thousands of children will continue to be denied the education to which they are entitled by law."

The proposed regulations alone already contain some serious problems:

• That new schools only get reviewed within three years of operations, even though public funding for those schools begins from day one.
• Existing schools get reviewed by the "end of 2022-2023 or as soon as practicable thereafter." That's like saying "when you get around to it, but no rush."
• The proposed regs state that they: "Allow for integrated curriculum that delivers content by incorporating more than one subject into the content of a course." This offers a wide opening for unscrupulous schools to game the system and claim that teaching Noah and the flood is part of a world history curriculum.