This afternoon, the coalition leading the fight against the State’s attempt to regulate yeshiva education filed a brief laying out its case with the New York Court of Appeals – the State’s highest court.

The SED regulations at issue in the lawsuit limit the rights of parents to direct the education of their children and force private schools to obtain “substantially equivalent” status from the State Education Department to continue to operate. As the brief explains, “there is also no legal or statutory basis for SED or LSAs to unilaterally decide that parents have not met their compulsory education obligations or to direct them to unenroll their children from the nonpublic school they have chosen.”

While SED’s new regulations purport to wield wide authority over parents and private schools, until very recently SED conceded that it had no such authority. In fact, the yeshiva’s brief unearthed SED memoranda from just a few years ago where SED conceded that it did not have that authority. In those memos to local school districts, SED wrote that they “do not have direct authority over private schools” and also conceded that the only way a parent’s choice of private school could be overridden was if “a petition was filed in Family Court by public school authorities to the effect that their children are truant.” Now SED is acting directly contrary to those limits on its authority.

The yeshivas also pointed out the hypocrisy of the State Education Department, which seeks to come down hard on private schools that don’t receive its “substantially equivalent” badge but doesn’t even have the authority over public schools. While SED is busy bothering yeshivas, the legislature has strictly limited its authority over public schools. For a public school, “when a school ranks among the lowest-performing public schools for ten consecutive years, the Education Law permits SED to take action against the school, including appointing a receiver to take control of the school and restructure it.” That’s right. Failing public schools are given 10 years, and even then they aren’t closed, but must operate with a receiver in place.

The yeshivas also reminded the court about the fundamental rights parents have to ensure their children receive a religious education. One judge of the Court of Appeals “described the rights of parents to control the education of their children and to instruct their children in a religious setting as “true and absolute rights under natural law, antedating, and superior to, any human constitution or statute,” while the United States Supreme Court described parents’ rights “to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control” as a “fundamental theory of liberty

upon which all governments in this Union repose.” If only the State Education Department took time off from harassing private school parents and read its history.

The yeshiva effort is lead by PEARLS, which has been at the forefront of protecting the rights of yeshiva parents and yeshivas for the past decade.

READ THE BRIEF HERE

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)