Dozen Yeshivah Heads Support Renewing NYC Mayoral Control

Citing accomplishments on special education and pre-K, more than a dozen heads of New York City yeshivos and mosdos urged the state legislature to renew the mayor’s control of the school system, a 13-year-old jurisdiction that may expire in two weeks.

In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan on Monday, representatives from the yeshivos and organizations, all of which are in Brooklyn, said that they make the request “from the perspective of representatives of schools for the city’s non-public school population.”

The yeshivos — Bobov, Belz, Krasna, Mevakshei Hashem, Pupa, Satmar, Skver and Torah Vodaath — along with Shema Kolainu, wrote that a centralized authority was more efficient and had “greater accountability.”

They praised Mayor Bill de Blasio for his “bold steps” to streamline the process for parents who send their special–needs children to nonpublic schools, to relax a policy to allow religious groups access to public school facilities during non-school hours, and to maximize religious schools’ participation in his universal pre-kindergarten program.

“We question whether any of these gains would have been achieved had control over the Department of Education been decentralized, as some are now proposing,” the groups wrote. “Stated simply, having the city’s educational buck stop at the mayor’s desk means that we have a clear person to whom to turn when policies affecting our schools and community are being developed and implemented. That is a good thing, an important thing.”

Former mayor Michael Bloomberg secured control over the school system in 2002, winning a long sought- after prize that his predecessors failed to achieve. But Republicans are reluctant to give the same to the current mayor, who campaigned against them in last year’s election and is unfriendly to charter schools.

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the June 18th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.