Total submissions:

510

May 29, 2022

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

Medical Professionals 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 are physicians and healthcare professionals writing to share our deep concerns with the proposed New York State substantial equivalency Regulations. We are physicians, dentists, PAs, registered nurses, and nurse practitioners. We are graduates of some of the most prestigious schools in the country.  We practice medicine in leading hospitals in New York, including NYU, Columbia-Presbyterian, Maimonides Health, Mount Sinai, and medical practices across the state. Our specialties run the gamut from allergists and anesthesiologists, to surgeons and urologists, and everything in between.

As Yeshiva graduates and successful medical professionals practicing at the highest levels of our fields, our success speaks for itself.  To attain licensure, we spent many years working on extensive theoretical and practical coursework at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  Our education included rigorous curricula, demanding examinations, intensive research, and grueling rotations. To successfully navigate this journey, we needed to tap into our deepest reservoirs of mental and physical stamina, and attribute much of our success in doing so to the foundational Yeshiva education we received.

Respectfully, the notion that Orthodox Jewish education is vastly inferior to that offered in public school is a gross misdiagnosis; and the purported “cure” of mandating that all private schools strive to be “substantially equivalent” to public schools, as described in the Regulations, is more dangerous still.

In addition to the classic secular studies education, in Yeshiva we learned focus, discipline, and persistence. We learned how to assimilate and analyze large amounts of information and knowledge.  We were consistently fed new cases and fact-sets, and learned to approach unfamiliar situations with a can-do and problem-solving attitude.

Our Orthodox Jewish education instilled within us integrity, compassion, and the value of human life. In our practices, we routinely encounter fellow human beings in pain and distress, and we must assess, analyze, diagnose, and problem-solve, with empathy. Often, we must make critical decisions in high-stress situations with the highest of stakes – human life. In these situations, we draw upon both our medical education and and the values and skills we were imbued with in our Yeshiva education, to work, as G-d’s agents, to help heal our fellow human beings.

We take these foundational values with us daily. They make us better physicians, dentists, PAs, registered nurses, and nurse practitioners.

They make us better people.

We respectfully ask you to consider our success. Know the system that has been the foundation of our success, and the success of so many, before attempting to alter it.  Consider the first-hand perspectives of the many of us who have signed below, and be vulnerable enough to reconsider your own.

Seriously reconsider these proposed Regulations upon Yeshivas and all private schools in New York State.

Respectfully,

cc: The Honorable Members of the Board of Regents