EXCLUSIVE: City investigators visited less than half of yeshivas accused of failing to teach academics

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/ny-metro-yeshiva-probe-stalled-20180618-story.html

The city investigators have visited less than half of the yeshivas accused of failing to teach students basic academics, the Daily News has learned.

Just 15 out of 39 politically connected Jewish religious schools have been inspected in three years, Education Department officials said Monday.

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.

Yaffed executive director Naftuli Moster accused de Blasio of stalling the probe to avoid angering the city’s powerful Hasidic community and said the mayor’s failure to act leaves thousands of city students without a proper education.

“The mayor himself is stonewalling,” Moster said. “We allege that thousands of kids are being neglected at all of these schools, and the city can’t even be bothered to pay them a visit.” An estimated 25,000 students are at stake at the male-only schools, Moster said.