East Ramapo, state hit with yeshiva lawsuit

Parents of students in several East Ramapo Hasidic yeshivas, and former students who attended them, filed a class-action civil rights lawsuit Friday that accuses education officials of failing to provide boys with a sound, basic education.

Seven plaintiffs charge the state, the school district and four yeshivas with failing to offer adequate secular coursework for boys, and seeks to require them to do so as soon as the next school year. It also seeks unspecified money damages for former students who, the suit contends, were failed by the state and local administrators entrusted with their education.

Filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by the public-interest law firm Advocates for Justice, the suit alleges that defendants exercised "willful blindness and deliberate refusal to acknowledge that yeshiva students need, require, and are legally entitled to, at the very least, a minimally adequate secular education in addition to their religious education."

The claim contends that four Hasidic yeshivas in Monsey, Spring Valley and New Square do not teach English, "basic literacy, calculating, and verbal skills necessary to enable children to eventually function productively as civil participants."

The lawsuit also alleges that defendants have broken the law by:

Failing to hire or train teachers and staff "capable" of teaching secular studies.

Discriminating against boys by providing girls with more robust secular studies.

Failing to oversee or control yeshivas' use of tax money for their designated secular education purposes.

Failing to properly equip students with English and other skills necessary to obtain employment, creating generations of people who are dependent on government assistance.

The filing is unprecedented in Rockland County. It draws attention to a small but increasingly visible segment of the ultra-Orthodox community that believes some private schools have denied their students adequate instruction in secular studies. It also compounds the years-long pitched battle between public school parents and the Orthodox Jewish controlled school board in East Ramapo.

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“We are suing to compel the state to work with local communities,” said attorney Laura Barbieri of Advocates for Justice.

Barbieri’s firm worked in collaboration with Naftuli Moster and his non-profit group Yaffed (Young Advocates for a Fair Education), whose efforts in New York City this year helped spark the New York City Education Department to investigate the educational standards in more than three dozen Brooklyn yeshivas.

The suit seeks to have a "graduated introduction" of secular studies, with teachers deemed competent to instruct classes in English. The suit asks that three hours of secular education per day be instituted, along with an enforcement mechanism. Plaintiffs are also asking the court to monitor the yeshivas in the future.

One group of plaintiffs, the former students who are now adults, are also seeking the support an educational remediation program.

The lawsuit names state Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia, the state Department of Education, the state Board of Regents and New York state, which all have particular responsibilities for enforcing the law. Defendants also include the East Ramapo school district and its Board of Education. The only named local defendant is East Ramapo's new interim schools superintendent, Deborah Wortham, who began her post on Nov. 2, replacing Joel Klein, who resigned about nine months before his contract was set to expire.

There are some 80 yeshivas with profoundly varying educational standards in the expansive East Ramapo school district.

The yeshivas named as defendants in the lawsuit are all attended by the plaintiffs' children or were attended by the plaintiffs themselves.

The schools and their administrators include:

Yiedel Spitzer of the United Talmudical Academy in Spring Valley and Monsey.

Moshe Kohn of Yeshiva Darkei Emunah in Spring Valley.

Ernest Schwartz of Yeshiva Tzion Yosef in Spring Valley.

Eluzer Moshel and Dov Goldman of Yeshiva Avir Yakov in New Square

"Defendants have contributed to ... a culture of ignorance that results in the certitude that generations of yeshiva students, once adults, become financially impoverished, have no alternative but to be sustained principally by public benefits," the complaint charges.

The plaintiffs are not named because they fear reprisal from their close-knit communities, Barbieri said.

The Journal News has reported extensively on this issue this year, noting in September that some Hasidic families in Rockland County were beginning to explore ways to improve their children's education.

"I certainly think that The Journal News coverage likely caused plaintiffs to be willing to come forward, even in an anonymous capacity," Barbieri said, explaining that, though social pressure to conform may be more extreme in Hasidic communities, everyone can relate to the pain of being cast out of a group.

"They and their families risk being shunned or expelled from the community, having their businesses boycotted and ruined, suffering verbal threats and abuses, physical assault and property damage," the suit states.

The filing says the parents and students have no realistic choice in schools because "the community in which they live demands adherence to its religious and societal rules and norms."

The 42-page document also addresses the schools' reliance on taxpayer finances. It says the yeshivas received federal, state and local funds, and that grants must be used to supplement secular education, "not supplant it, and certainly not to be used for religious education."

Barbieri has represented East Ramapo parents in several lawsuits against the school district since 2012. Until now, she has backed public school parents in their quest to improve education for their children. She said this latest lawsuit does not signify that the quality of East Ramapo's public schools is acceptable, but noted that at least the public schools have objective standards to measure progress.

In other words, Barbieri said, "At least we know they are failing."

Attorney Laura Barbieri fights for East Ramapo school children Laura Barbieri, an attorney with Advocates for Justice, is very active in education and civil rights issues. She represents children and parents of the private yeshivas in East Ramapo and in the school district. ( Tania Savayan / The Journal News )

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