Phantom Bill Targeting Education Rules Triggers Sharp Backlash in Statehouse

A draft bill quietly circulating in the state legislature could significantly weaken oversight of nonpublic schools — including yeshivas — by loosening education standards and delaying enforcement deadlines. Few details about the bill have emerged, including who authored it, and multiple legislators say they haven’t seen the proposal.

New York Focus reached out to 24 members of the Assembly and Senate, including 19 on education committees. None could offer information about the bill’s origin or progress.

Governor Kathy Hochul said last week that she hadn’t seen the proposal and wouldn’t say whether she supported it — though she did back a similar effort last year.

The draft bill’s appearance so late during budget negotiations indicates that its sponsors are likely seeking to have the language inserted directly into a budget bill, as opposed to formally introducing it.

New York law requires nonpublic schools to provide a “substantially equivalent” education to that of public schools, and to teach core subjects like math, English, and science. If passed, the bill would weaken those regulations by making it easier for schools to meet the standard and by delaying the deadline — June 30 — for some schools to meet the requirements.

Some leaders of the Ultra-Orthodox community have fiercely opposed state oversight of yeshivas — which often prioritize teaching religious Jewish texts over core subjects — maintaining that they should retain full autonomy over their schools. A 2022 New York Times investigation found that many yeshivas, despite receiving $1 billion in public funds during the prior four years, had failed to teach students core subjects, left students unable to speak easily in English or find jobs post-graduation, and had some of the lowest standardized test scores in the state.

News of the proposal circulating in the Assembly elicited a sharp rebuke from the state Education Department. Spokesperson JP O’Hare said the agency “is concerned that access to a high-quality education for every child could be traded away as part of a political deal to pass a state budget.”

“This appears to be an attempt by some legislators to go around our state’s courts and dismantle a law that has been in place for over a century,” O’Hare said.

State Senator Liz Krueger backed the agency’s stance.

The education department’s “public opposition is crucially important — they worked hard and long to come up with a model of substantial equivalency that is supported by nearly every public, private, and religious school system in our State,” Krueger said in a statement. “The courts have also ruled in their favor. A handful of schools, and an even smaller number of legislators, should not be allowed to undermine New York children’s right to their education.”

State Senator John Liu, who sits on the Senate Education Committee and is the chair of the standing committee on New York City education, reaffirmed the agency’s viewpoint.

“Their statement is accurate,” Liu said. “And it’s pretty straightforward.”

Yet some saw the news as an opportunity to go even further.

Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt issued a statement on Tuesday demanding the repeal of the substantial equivalency regulations in the state budget altogether.

“Our state’s woke, big-government education agenda has gone too far in targeting religious education,” Ortt said. “For too long, Albany bureaucrats and radical progressives have been waging war on parental rights in education and trampling on religious schools’ autonomy. We don’t need to just delay these attacks, we need to end them.”

The substantial equivalency regulations have been state law since 1895. The state Education Department issued new guidelines in 2022 to better enforce the rules.

Ortt’s office also did not provide details about the bill.

This latest effort to weaken the regulations is part of a years-long battle over whether the state should have oversight over Haredi and Hasidic yeshivas, of which there are more than 100 in New York, primarily in Brooklyn and Rockland and Orange counties.

The state Education Department has already pulled funding for six yeshivas in Brooklyn, well ahead of the upcoming deadline. The agency said those schools have failed to cooperate with both city and state education agencies, despite several deadlines and invitations to meet.

“The majority of nonpublic schools across the state are currently cooperating with the regulatory requirements,” O’Hare said in a statement. “We continue to stand ready to engage or re-engage with the small number of schools that have failed to demonstrate that they meet the minimum requirements of the law to date.”

In January, a coalition of yeshivas filed a complaint with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, alleging discriminatory treatment by the state Education Department as well as the New York City Department of Education.