Adrienne Sanders

asanders@lohud.com

A bill seeking stricter oversight of private schools was introduced to the state Assembly Monday by Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee, D-Suffern.

The measure aims to ensure that private schools provide an education that is "substantially equivalent" to that of public schools in the same region, as required by law.

State Education Department spokeswoman Jeanne Beattie told The Journal News in September that her department is "unaware of any penalties exacted against districts or superintendents for failure to determine substantial equivalence."

The current law, passed in 1928, holds district superintendents responsible for upholding that standard. It offers detailed recommendations as to what subjects should be taught. It does not, however, require any tests to prove it.

In other words, the law has never been enforced.

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This outrages some former students of Hasidic yeshivas and parents of current students who say they weren't offered almost any instruction in English, math, social studies or science.

Jaffee's bill aims to turn existing state guidelines defining "substantial equivalence" into law. District superintendents will be responsible for filling out a "state standards report for each non-public school in the district" according to the official description of the bill.

"It is a common sense bill," said Naftuli Moster, founder of Yaffed, an advocacy group dedicated to improving secular education in Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jewish yeshivas. "I hope Assemblywoman Jaffee's colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support it for the sake of the tens of thousands of children who are being denied a basic education due to the lack of state oversight and enforcement."

Jaffee is already co-sponsoring a bill by Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski, D-New City, which seeks to create a formal process for private school parents to complain to the state education commissioner and for the state to investigate such complaints. The bill is in the Assembly's Education Committee.

Jaffee could not be immediately reached for comment.

Twitter: @ASKSanders