An amendment to the Parents Bill of Rights being advanced by Republicans in the House of Representatives was proposed by Congressman Mike Lawler, whose district covers Rockland County, in order to make it clear that non-public elementary and secondary schools would not be subject to any requirements under the bill.
In a speech on Thursday, Lawler discussed New York Governor Kathy Hochul and her administration’s efforts to impose requirements on private schools in his district. He also mentioned that his constituents have contacted his office to express their concerns that the state is trying to force them to change the way they educate their own children.
“A key provision of this new state regulation was actually thrown out in court today,” Lawler noted in his speech. “Parents choose to send their children to the school they feel best suits their needs and beliefs. It is not the role of any government to dictate to parents and children what they should believe and practice, and in my district it certainly is a concern held by many parents.”
A “Sense of Congress” clause also proposed by Lawler reads: “It is the sense of Congress that local educational agencies do not have the authority to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum or program of instruction of non-public elementary or secondary schools.”
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9 Responses
Mike Lawler has shown that he is committed to the orthodox community
The parents should make a deal with the Government, ‘my son should never be entitled to food stamps and we parents shouldn’t be forced to obtain a decent education for him’.
1. But would it exempt students from compulsory education requirements – the yeshiva can be left unmolested but the students can still be required to get a government approved education with values and ideology determined by the state.
2. Since when does the Constitution give the Federal government control over local schools?
3. If push comes to shove, a state is under no requirement to exempt politically incorrect institutions from taxes or to allow them to accept charitable contributions.
As usual, Republicans take the side of the Jews whereas the Democrats oppose the Jews.
What about thanking the sacrificing independents who were fighting this even before Agudah members got involved ?
But as usual they’re marginalized, If not denigrated
Some examples:Rabbi N Leiter,
Rabbi J D Homnick,Rabbi A Gordimer,Rabbi Y Levin,Mr.Y Teleky
@akuperma, since the federal government doles trillions of dollars to local schools.
PS Mike has done more from the frum community than SP Maloney did in his entire time he was in office, good riddance
He’s really sticking up for yidishkite something that we didn’t see for a while! Shout out to Yossi gestetner for having the biggest role in bringing out the Orthodox votes for him!!!!!!!
The headline is very very misleading. Lawler’s amendment would only exempt private schools from the requirements of THIS NEW BILL that the Republicans are pushing through (but will almost certainly die in the senate), to protect parents’ rights.
Of course at private schools parents’ rights need no protection, since they can simply take their children out if they don’t like what the school is doing. It’s the public school parents who need protection, because as we have seen lately the public schools are deliberately keeping them in the dark while they indoctrinate their children in neo-Marxism, nature-worship, whatever is the opposite of patriotism, and all other kinds of perversion and wickedness, as well as assist them in having life-altering medical treatments that the parents oppose.
Akuperma:
1. It doesn’t exempt private schools from anything required by state law, or even from anything required by any OTHER federal law.
2. It doesn’t. This bill seeks to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6311), which begins: “For any State desiring to receive a grant under this part, the State educational agency shall….”.
3. A state certainly can’t prevent private schools from accepting charitable contributions. Nor does it have any control of federal taxes. It can condition schools’ exemptions from local taxes on their performing to certain objective criteria, but it can NOT deny them any exemptions merely for being politically incorrect. Any exemption generally available to educational institutions must be available to all such institutions regardless of their ideology.
A Ku Klux Klan school teaching white supremacy must be given the same grants and exemptions that any other school gets, so long as it meets the objective, non-ideological criteria, such as teaching the subjects the state wants taught. And those required subjects cannot include anything ideological, such as teaching children that whites are not better than other people. Yeshivas can certainly not be denied any grant or exemption merely for refusing to teach that lifestyles contrary to the Torah are acceptable; I’m not sure they can even be required to teach that these lifestyles even exist. It may be that since their existence is an objective fact, they can be required to teach that, but they can accompany it with as much condemnation as they like.
Certainly yeshivas can (as a condition of receiving grants and exemptions) be required to make students aware of the theory of evolution and its main features; but they cannot be required to endorse it. At my school the science teacher was not Jewish, but a Bible-believing Xian; before he started on evolution he would tell the class “This is what you are required to understand so you can pass the tests, but don’t believe a word of it; none of what I’m about to teach you is true, but you have to be aware of this falsehood”. That statement is completely protected by the first amendment, and no government entity can penalize a school in any way for it, including by denying it any privilege it would otherwise receive.