NY State Education Department Releases Updated Regulations Requiring Inspections at Private Schools

By Yehudit Garmaise

Representatives of statewide local school districts will be conducting periodic and regular inspections and assessments of private schools’ curricula and their teachers to determine whether they are “substantially equivalent” to the curricula of local public schools, New York’s Education Department (NYSED) announced today, in a new proposed regulation. http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/322p12d1.pdf

If private school curricula are found not substantially equivalent to those of public schools, then private schools’ funding will be cut off from the state and parents will be directed to enroll their children in different schools, reported Yeshiva World News about the NYSED’s third attempt to regulate what private schools teach.

The NYSED released its first set of guidelines for non-public schools to provide an education that was substantially equivalent to public schools in 2018, but in April 2019, a court ruled that the NY Education Department must undergo a “ruling making process.”

When the NYSED proposed new draft regulations for private schools in July 2019, more than 140,000 yeshiva students, graduates, and their families statewide expressed such considerable opposition in the public comments to the proposed regulations that the NY Board of Regents directed the Education Department to “re-engage stakeholders,” an NYSED press release said.

The NYSED then gathered input and feedback from leaders of groups that represent tens of thousands of students at 20 meetings online to create the regulations released today.

The representatives of the groups at the meetings ranged from the Commissioner’s Advisory Council for Religious and Independent Schools, local Orthodox Jewish groups, public school leaders, Amish school leaders, Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools (PEARLS), and an anti-yeshiva group.

The administration of state Regents examinations can allow non-public high schools to establish a “path to equivalence,” but yeshivos ketana are not offered another option to inspections and assessments by representatives of local school districts.