[YWN VIDEO & PHOTO LINKS BELOW] Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited Barkai Yeshiva in Boro Park, Brooklyn on Wednesday evening to celebrate the launch of free instructional tutoring services for nearly 10,000 yeshiva children in New York City through the federal No Child Left Behind Act’s Title I program. For the first time, these yeshiva students will receive free small group remedial instruction in the subjects of reading, writing and math. The annual value of these brand-new services is estimated at $24 million.
 
The New York City Department of Education worked together with a coalition of several major Jewish organizations, including the Sephardic Community Federation (SCF), UJO of Williamsburg, Agudath Israel, and the Board of Jewish Education, to ensure that yeshivas have the ability to receive these instructional tutoring services from third-party vendors. The need for third-party vendors stemmed from the fact that the teachers’ union contract does not allow teachers the flexibility to accommodate the late afternoon hours of a typical yeshiva’s secular studies program. As a result, thousands of yeshiva children began receiving free instructional tutoring services from four different third-party vendors in New York City for the first time just last week.
 
“A good education is the key to a lifetime of success; that’s why we’ve worked so hard to turn our public schools around,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “We also haven’t ignored the needs of other schools in our city, including Yeshivas, which are an important part of the fabric of our City. Even though City government is prevented by law from funding parochial schools, we have taken innovative steps to maximize Title I funding,” explained Mayor Bloomberg at Barkai Yeshiva this evening.
 
“Our research revealed that the federal Title I program should be providing New York’s yeshiva students with nearly fifty million dollars a year worth of free tutoring services but was not actually doing so,” said David G. Greenfield, Executive Vice President of SCF. “Armed with that data, we spent two years working with the Department of Education to change the current rules so that our yeshiva students would benefit from this vital federal program. This would never have happened without the staunch support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chancellor Joel Klein, and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott.”
 
This historic breakthrough allows over 14,000 children in 46 yeshivas to receive top-notch remedial services at absolutely no cost to parents or yeshivas. SCF Executive Vice President David G. Greenfield and UJO President Rabbi David Niederman, both of whom were appointed by the Mayor’s office to the NYC-DOE’s Non-Public School Standing Committee, led the historic effort with the Mayor to obtain millions of dollars worth of education services for New York’s yeshiva students.
 
As part of its effort to give yeshivas the opportunity to avail themselves of federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) services, SCF policy consultant David Rubel prepared a comprehensive 28-page report for the NYC-DOE in February 2007 entitled “Why Aren’t New York City Yeshivas Receiving Their Fair Share Of NCLB Funds & Services And What Can Be Done To Remedy This Inequity?”
 
The study found that although the federal NCLB Act requires that all funds get distributed in an equitable dollar-per-pupil eligibility formula for public and private schools, there was substantial evidence that students in New York City’s yeshivas have not benefited from this legislation.  The report concluded that 30,000 students in Brooklyn yeshivas are missing out on approximately $48 million each year in Title I services which they are entitled to, but not receiving.
 
“The federal government established a program intended to benefit all struggling students, in both public and private school alike, yet most yeshivas were not able to take advantage of this program,” said SCF Executive Vice President David G. Greenfield. “Now, thanks to the Mayor and the cooperation of the DOE, we can all be optimistic that no student in New York City will be left behind any longer.”

YWN VIDEO & PHOTO LINK: Click HERE for video #1, and HERE for #2 – & click HERE for photos by Hillel Engel for YWN.