Advocates have said an estimated 25,000 students are at stake at the male-only schools.
By JILLIAN JORGENSEN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, BEN CHAPMAN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSUpdated: AUGUST 17, 2018 18:09Yeshiva students pray in a synagogue(photo credit: REUTERS)
(TNS) - New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio administration officials have completed a probe of the city's yeshivas accused of failing to teach students basic academics, sources with knowledge of the investigation said Wednesday night.But city officials wouldn’t provide any update on progress of the investigation, which began three years ago.“We’ll decline to comment,” said de Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips, when asked about the probe’s findings.Mayor de Blasio launched an investigation of academic instruction at city yeshivas in July 2015 after the pro-secular Jewish education group Yaffed published a list of 39 such schools that received public funding but failed to provide simple secular academic lessons.Advocates have said an estimated 25,000 students are at stake at the male-only schools.And de Blasio has been accused of stalling the probe to avoid angering the city’s powerful Hasidic community.As of June, city officials said just 15 out of 39 politically connected Jewish religious schools had been inspected in the probe.But at the time, de Blasio spokeswoman Jaclyn Rothenberg said the report would be issued “soon.”Yaffed executive director Naftuli Moster said the mayor’s failure to act until now has left thousands of city students without a proper education.“After taking more than three years to conduct an investigation of 39 schools that have long been known to fail to provide a sound secular education, we hope to see a thorough, extensive, and insightful report from the city,” Moster said.
