Selling Out the Kids
It turns out Mayor de Blasio personally helped cut the squalid 2017 deal to delay the investigation of yeshivas accused of failing to teach the basics — once again putting his own political interests ahead of children’s needs. And The Post’s Susan Edelman found the e-mails to prove it.
The mayor was pushing the Legislature to renew his control of the city public-school system, but state Sen. Simcha Felder was blocking it, demanding protection for the handful of yeshivas that refused to cooperate with the city investigation. To appease the Brooklyn Democrat, de Blasio agreed to slow that already-delayed investigation for months — abandoning kids who allegedly weren’t being taught basic subjects like English, math, science and history.
Those damning City Hall e-mails show that, even as de Blasio claimed publicly to be taking the issue “very seriously,” he was more concerned about pleasing powerful ultra-Orthodox leaders. They also reveal that he made key phone calls to seal the deal.
“We said we would not issue a report this summer (though we previously said we would),” City Hall aide Karin Goldmark told de Blasio in a smoking-gun e-mail of June 29, 2017. She emphasized that the city would go easy on the 39 holdout yeshivas to please Felder and his allies: “We have made clear that when we do issue a report it will be gentle and will cite progress (assuming progress continues).”
When the city Department of Education finally issued a report on its investigation, it could vouch for only two of the 39 schools as teaching adequately. But by then Felder & Co. had changed the underlying state law — giving the troubled schools yet more time to stall.
Last year, a joint investigation by the city’s Department of Investigation and the Special Commissioner of Investigation concluded that the 2017 delay was the result of political “horse-trading.”
Goldmark, meanwhile, is now a DOE deputy chancellor — a fine reward for selling out so many kids.
Then again, that probably makes her fit in just fine at this mayor’s Department of Education, where adult political interests always trump children’s needs.