Blaz’s dereliction of duty on yeshivas

In the wake of his reelection, it is finally time for Mayor de Blasio to stop dragging his feet on the deplorable state of secular education in the city’s yeshivas — and to stop stonewalling when questioned about it.

In July 2015, in response to a complaint by my organization, Yaffed, the city announced it was launching an investigation into what has been an outrageously open secret for decades: that many of New York City’s Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox yeshivas provide no more than 90 minutes of secular studies for boys in elementary school and no secular education at all in high school.

That’s a flagrant violation of state law, which requires all schools, public or private, to educate all kids on the basics.

Yet here we are, more than two years later, and City Hall has nothing meaningful to show.

Because of the way the de Blasio administration has kept its probe shrouded in secrecy, we don’t know much about its workings. But what we do know is troubling.

The city’s investigation was initially conceived as just a questionnaire to be sent to the 39 schools named in Yaffed’s complaint — hardly a serious vehicle to get at the truth from institutions that have been flouting the law for years.

Then, under pressure from Yaffed, the city agreed to also conduct site visits — but with plenty of advance notice. Graduates of these schools have made clear that their leaders, knowing that inspectors were coming, have become quite adept over the years at putting up a show of compliance.

As of September, officials admitted to having visited only six schools. Even worse, the investigators apparently accepted the Orthodox leaders’ suggestions as to which schools to visit.

Why has this all taken so long, with no end in sight? De Blasio has been pressed on that question in various venues over the past several months. Not one of his answers has been satisfactory.

At a press conference in September, the mayor claimed that they just need more time and need to visit more yeshivas. More than two years?

In a meeting with editors at the Daily News last month, the mayor stated: “I think the way we’re going about it is the way to achieve the outcome.”

But the way the city is going about it would seem to be nothing more than talk and no action or any threat of action.

“We’ve made crystal clear,” he told The News, “that everyone has to meet the standards.”

Is that so? New York law already makes crystal clear that yeshivas, like every private school, must meet the same educational requirements as the public schools. The yeshivas well know it.

The question all along has been what the mayor is actually prepared to do to see that the law is enforced. On that, he’s been consistently evasive.

In a recent town hall meeting, he said: “I think the dialogue we’re having now with the yeshiva community, we’re making very clear where we have to end up, and we are giving people an opportunity to have a give-andtake.”

“Where we have to end up” presumes a solution. Why is de Blasio skipping to the last step when the problem has yet to be revealed, rigorously, through an investigation and report?

The more cynical among us might attribute the mayor’s footdragging to politics. Hasidic leaders have supported de Blasio with generous campaign contributions and have delivered the Hasidic community’s large bloc of votes.

But that leaves behind students themselves, who are being systematically failed.

I was one of them. I graduated from a yeshiva in 2005 and discovered how little education I had gotten. I was unable to get a decent job with the limited education and English language skills I possessed. Nor was I prepared to pursue a career — since I didn’t have a high school diploma.

Whether politics has been behind all of this or not, Mr. de Blasio cannot run for a third term. So one can only hope that after too many immoral delays, he will at long last get serious about forcing these yeshivas to provide their students with at least the minimum level secular education required by law.

He is to be lauded for his bold leadership in promoting the education of so many of New York City’s children. If he fails to take similarly bold action here, his opponents in any future run for public office can point to his failure to confront yeshivas as putting the lie to his claim that as mayor he sought to improve the educational opportunities of all of New York City’s children.