As New York City has finally begun to exercise oversight over ultra-Orthodox yeshivas that have graduated students without a basic education, some of those Jewish schools have defied city health department scrutiny and helped to feed a measles outbreak. Forty children have contracted measles in recent months, all of the cases linked to a single Brooklyn yeshiva that ignored an order from city health officials to prevent children who hadn’t been vaccinated from attending classes.

Yet that hasn’t stopped yeshiva supporters in Albany from maneuvering to free the schools from government supervision, a reflection of the political pull ultra-Orthodox leaders have come to expect in New York.

Where to begin? How about 2015? That’s when a group of former yeshiva students known as Young Advocates for Fair Education filed a complaint accusing the New York City Department of Education of failing to hold dozens of yeshivas to state education standards, leaving them without a basic command of English, math or science.

There was little urgency in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s response. By last August, more than three years later , the city had inspected only half of the 30 yeshivas in the complaint that were still operating. Thanks to a push last year from the new schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, all are expected to be visited by the end of the month. City officials say that none of those visited have failed state education standards, but the city still needs to detail to the public what it finds.