New York May Weaken Its Oversight Over Religious Schools

New York lawmakers are considering a deal that would dramatically weaken their oversight over religious schools, potentially a major victory for the state’s Hasidic Jewish community.

The proposal, which could become part of a state budget deal, has raised profound concern among education experts, including the state education commissioner, Betty Rosa, who said in an interview that such changes amount to a “travesty” for children who attend religious schools that do not offer a basic secular education.

“We would be truly compromising the future of these young people,” by weakening the law, Ms. Rosa said. “As the architect of education in this system, how could I possibly support that decision,” she added.

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday announced a $254 billion budget agreement but acknowledged many of the particulars are still being hashed out.

Behind the scenes, a major sticking point appears to be whether the governor and the Legislature will agree to the changes on private school oversight, according to several people with direct knowledge of the negotiations, which may include a delay in any potential consequences for private schools that receive enormous sums of taxpayer dollars but sometimes flout state education law by not offering basic education in English or math.

The state is also considering lowering the standards that a school would have to meet in order to demonstrate that it is following the law.

Though the potential changes in state education law would technically apply to all private schools, they are chiefly relevant to Hasidic schools, which largely conduct religious lessons in Yiddish and Hebrew in their all-boys schools, known as yeshivas.

The potential deal is the result of years of lobbying by Hasidic leaders and their political representatives.

Legislative leaders acknowledged that changes to the educational standard were being considered but declined to provide any additional detail.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Senate majority leader, said on Tuesday that conversations on the topic were “ongoing” and that she was unsure what would be in the final budget legislation. A spokesman for Governor Hochul declined to comment. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said that an outline of a deal was “on the table” when asked about it earlier this week.

The effort has been led by Simcha Felder, who recently represented a swath of Brooklyn in the State Senate before being elected to the City Council, and Simcha Eichenstein, who represents a similar area in the Assembly.

The Hasidic community has long seen government oversight of their schools as an existential threat, and it has emerged as their top political issue in recent years.

It has taken on fresh urgency in recent months, as the state education department, led by Ms. Rosa, has moved for the first time to enforce the law, after years of deliberation and delay.

The department has announced plans to close six Hasidic yeshivas it has said are not complying with the state law, in some cases because the schools refused to meet with state education officials to discuss improvement plans.

That move, by far the strongest action New York has taken to crack down on schools it says are breaking the law, amounts to a worst-case scenario for Hasidic leaders.

There is little dispute, even among Hasidic leaders, that many yeshivas across the lower Hudson Valley and parts of Brooklyn are failing to provide an adequate secular education. Some religious leaders have boasted about their refusal to comply with the law and have barred families from having English books in their homes.

Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, which has been closely aligned with the Hasidic community, found in 2023 that 18 Brooklyn yeshivas were not complying with state law, a finding that was backed up by state education officials.

A 2022 New York Times investigation found that scores of all-boys yeshivas collected about $1 billion in government funding over a four-year period but failed to provide a basic education, and that teachers in some of the schools used corporal punishment.

It is clear why Hasidic leaders, who are deeply skeptical of any government oversight, would want to weaken and delay consequences for the schools they help run.

It is less obvious why elected officials would concede to those demands during this particular budget season. There is widespread speculation in Albany that Ms. Hochul, facing what may be a tough re-election fight next year, is hoping to curry favor from Hasidic officials, who could improve her chances with an endorsement.

The Hasidic community tends to vote as a bloc in order to influence low-turnout local elections, and some legislators have suggested that religious leaders might endorse specific candidates if their allies in the Legislature agreed to weaken the law.

Hasidic voters are increasingly conservative and tend to favor Republicans in general election contests.

That could benefit Ms. Hochul’s potential Republican challengers in next year’s race, Representative Mike Lawler, who is strongly allied with the Hasidic community that makes up a considerable portion of his Hudson Valley district, and Representative Elise Stefanik, a key Trump ally, even if Ms. Hochul offers a concession on yeshivas. A potential Democratic challenger, Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, has made an aggressive effort to court Jewish voters.

As the budget negotiations have reached their final, frenzied phase, some members have raised concerns about the education law change that their leadership is pressuring them to accept, and said they have not yet seen these proposals in bill form.

News of the potential deal reached Michael A. Rebell, a prominent education lawyer, who wrote in an email to one of the governor’s top education officials earlier this week that he would consider suing the state if the law was weakened.

“If this secret, behind-the-scenes deal is, in fact, accepted by the governor, we are going to have to challenge it publicly,” Mr. Rebell wrote in the email, obtained by The Times. “And we will also consider bringing a constitutional litigation to oppose it.”

New York’s state education law related to private schools, which is known as the substantial equivalency law, has been on the books for more than a century.

It was an obscure, uncontroversial rule up until a few years ago, when graduates of Hasidic yeshivas who said they were denied a basic education filed a complaint with the state, claiming that their education left them unprepared to navigate the secular world and find decent jobs.