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538

To submit your letter, please copy the text below into an email, add your name, and send it to [email protected], by 11:59 PM EDT on 5/31/22.

 

May 17, 2022

Ms. Christina Coughlin
89 Washington Ave., EBA Room 1078
SORIS, SE Regulation Comments
Albany, NY 12234
[email protected]

 

Lawyers and Law Students Oppose the Proposed Addition of Part 130 to Title 8 NYCRR (Rule ID# EDU-13-22-00025-P) to Strictly Regulate Private Schools

 

Dear Ms. Coughlin and Honorable Members of the Board of Regents:

We, the undersigned, are lawyers or law students who attended yeshiva elementary and/or secondary schools.

We did not succeed despite our yeshiva education, but because of it. The Orthodox schools we attended may have varied. Our commonality is that we value the education that we received, and believe that the skills, insights, character, and knowledge imparted to us in those schools helped prepare us for our subsequent demanding academic and professional careers.

Our firsthand experiences ought not be discounted.

The yeshiva education we received taught us to ask probing questions; prodded us to be methodical, yet boldly creative, in seeking reconciling solutions; instilled within us a strong work ethic; showed us how grit and perseverance are the cornerstones of personal and intellectual growth; provided a proving ground for reading text critically and analytically; and imparted to us the value of the pursuit of knowledge and truth, for their own sake.

Our yeshiva classrooms and study halls exuded student engagement. They fostered an environment where intellectual debate – sometimes vociferously spirited ones – both between students and teachers and among students thrived, yet were bound by cordiality, and circumscribed by respect. The daily exercise of being forced to work through difficult texts and engage in rigorous intellectual debate in a way that avoids ad hominem attack is something we carry forward in our legal practice or legal studies, and, frankly, is an operating modality sometimes lacking in today’s political and intellectual discourse.

Hamstringing this broad educational rubric by attempting to homogenize it with that found elsewhere, all in the name of “substantial equivalency,” risks quashing a multifaceted, and most singularly enriching K-12 education.

That is a major reason why those of us blessed with children have chosen yeshivas for our children’s education. Aside from our core religious tenet as Jewish parents to transmit Jewish learning and values to the next generation, we want our children to enjoy the rich educational experience we were afforded. The proposed Regulations hamper our ability as parents to direct our children’s education as we see fit.

As lawyers and law students, we are also concerned about excessive governmental interference with the independence of private schools, especially religious schools, in their provision of the type of education that their parents want for them, and that the students want for themselves. Imposing highly prescriptive requirements on private schools – more so, to our understanding, than exists in any other state in the country – could have a devastating impact on the ability of these schools to continue to provide their students with the mix of religious and secular studies that has worked so well, for so long.

We ask you to take our personal life experiences into account, and urge you to reconsider this attempt to strictly regulate private schools in New York State.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

 

 

cc: The Honorable Members of the Board of Regents