Posted on 12/19/21
| News Source: MATZAV
Brad Lander, the incoming New York City comptroller, vowed to do everything in his power to coax Orthodox yeshivos to teach a secular curriculum, Ben Sales reports for JTA
Lander, who is Jewish and a Democrat, discussed the issue Thursday night in a virtual Q-and-A with the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive policy group he co-founded.
The question of whether yeshivos should be forced to teach math, English and other secular subjects has roiled city and state government for years. The state requires private schools to teach a curriculum that is “at least substantially equivalent” to public school education. Last month, the state announced that it would issue updated regulations relating to that law.
“The state law is very clear that all schools, including private and parochial schools, have an obligation to deliver substantially comparable and competent secular education, especially where the city is contracting with those schools for transportation and books,” Lander said. “It is a responsibility of the city as a whole and the comptroller in particular to be paying attention, and audit and make sure those obligations are being met.”
As comptroller — a position he described partly as the city’s “chief accountability officer” — Lander will be able to audit yeshivas and discover which ones are falling short of the state’s standards. But he added that he does not have the power to force them to change their curricula, and hopes to proceed in a way that paves a “pathway to compliance.”
“You try to be strategic in the use of the resources, and the goal of that work is to help win change, not just do a ‘gotcha’ audit that gets a headline on the cover of the Times,” he said. “This is critical. Making sure that all our schools, including our yeshivas, provide the education that our kids need and deserve is part of our job together and one that I’m going to be spending time on.”