Statement from Senator Liz Krueger On The Failure Of Private Religious Schools To Provide A Sound Basic Education

New York City - State Senator Liz Krueger released the following statement today following the publication of the investigation in the New York Times regarding the failures of significant numbers of private schools serving New York's Hasidic Jewish community to provide a constitutionally guaranteed sound basic education:
 
“Yesterday's report in the New York Times is a damning indictment of the failure not only of certain private religious school leaders serving New York's ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic communities, but of the ongoing failure of the city and state to enforce the laws or listen to the pleas of graduates who have been sounding the alarm for more than a decade. As a legislator, as a taxpayer, and as a Jew, I am horrified that we continue to let this out-of-control system expand, and do so with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

"Every single one of these students has a constitutional right to a sound basic education, and they have been denied that right. They are being denied the ability to learn English, math, science, and other fundamental skills needed to survive in our society. This has got to stop - the city must conclude the investigation that it began in 2015, and be completely transparent about its findings; and the State Education Department regulations, to be adopted today, must be swiftly enforced."

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