The Rabbonim of New York have warned that a new initiative of the New York State Education Department (SED) in issuing guidance for secular studies in private schools is a very serious problem for the future of Jewish education. The main issue is that it empowers the state to make curriculum decisions about which subjects must be taught in Yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs, how long they must be taught, and how many hours of the day must be taken away from Limudei Kodesh in order to accommodate these requirements. This is a grave threat to our mesorah.
The position of the rabbonim is that they insist that, beyond certain minimal basics, decisions about Yeshiva chinuch must be made by the parents of our children and their manhigim, not government bureaucrats. The American Agudah is at the forefront of advocacy and legal efforts to ensure this.
They encourage the greater tzibbur to get involved. The Agudah has created a page through which one can easily send a letter to state officials registering a protest about this gross overreach of government power. Please take a moment to be part of this initiative by going to http://yeshivosbychoice.org/action
The New York State Education Department (SED) released on Wednesday, informally, a correction to their guidelines which threaten the Torah education of our children. It reduced the number of hours of required study per day, in the seventh and eighth grades, from seven hours to 3.5 hours. It also removed the time requirement from the fifth and sixth grades, clarifying that those grades have the same requirements as grades one through four.
While these revisions are obviously in response to concerns expressed by the Torah community, including the 50,000 people who signed a petition directed to the SED, nonetheless the guidelines, even after the corrections, are still a problem for those seventh and eighth graders who - in a four-day-per-week schedule - would need 4.2 hours of seat time per day to be in compliance. This is unacceptable to most Yeshivos in New York State.
