The New York Times confirms, for the 13th time in just three and half months, its obsession with spreading misinformation and demonizing Orthodox and Hasidic Jews.
That said, I wish they would address the substance of the Times latest investigation rather then simply accusing them of an unholy obsession.
Times investigative reporter, Brian M. Rosenthal accuses this community of abusing a government program that allows religious schools along with public schools to receive funds designed for children with disabilities.
That is indeed a worthy and even vital program. Religious children with disabilities can surely use that kind of government aid. The problem notes Rosenthal is that there seems to be a lot of fraud in how that money is obtained and used.
Whether that is true or not remains to be investigated in greater detail. But if Rosenthal is anywhere near accurate, then they are indeed guilty of fraud and have thus far gotten away with it. If Agudah is going to defend this community by calling this report misinformation they need to explain why that is a lie and not simply attack the ‘messenger’. Even if they perceive the messenger to be anti Chasid.
Sure, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But in the court of public opinion it doesn’t always work that way. When a respected journalist conducts a lengthy investigation and finds what seems to be a number of questionable practices that indicate deliberate fraud, the Agudah needs to do a lot more than just cry antisemitism. Here are a few snippets from the Times about what Rosenthal discovered:
...in Orthodox Jewish religious schools, particularly in parts of the Hasidic community, the shift (allowing religious schools to access disability funds) has also led to a windfall of government money for services that are sometimes not needed, or even provided, an examination by The New York Times has found…
The Times found that at 25 of the city’s approximately 160 Hasidic yeshivas, more than half of the students are classified as needing special education. Records show the classifications are routinely justified by citing the students’ struggles with English. Across all city schools, one in five students is classified as having a disability…
“There are a lot of kids in the ultra-Orthodox community who have disabilities. The problem is that the community is not serving the students,” said Elana Sigall, a former top city special education official, who now visits yeshivas as a consultant. “They’re accessing tremendous amounts of city resources, but they’re not actually providing special education.”
Families filed nearly 18,000 requests last year — with more than half coming from neighborhoods with large Hasidic and Orthodox populations — but officials waved through most of them...
Special education is supposed to support secular instruction. But in the Hasidic community, funding has been used to help students with religious studies, interviews and records show…
About 80 percent of requests for special education teacher support services last year came from the predominantly Hasidic and Orthodox districts, records show. While the city’s standard rate for that type of service is $42 an hour, many requests sought a so-called enhanced rate because they said they needed a Yiddish-speaking provider…
Five hearing officers told The Times that in proceedings involving Hasidic children, some parents have not seemed to know what they were requesting, or why. In one case, a mother could not explain her son’s disability, records show…
Etty Singer, who helped lead a Hasidic preschool program for nine years and worked closely with 10 schools, said she saw many of them aggressively refer children to be evaluated for special education. “They just wrote down, ‘needs services,’ ‘needs services,’ ‘needs services,’” she said. “They said that everybody needed services.”
Michael Fox, a child psychologist with 50 years of experience, works with yeshivas to evaluate whether students qualify for services. He said he strongly supports the Hasidic community. But, like several other people, he said he has seen its schools using special education providers for religious instruction…
Rosenthal is honest about the fact Chasidic schools are by far not alone in gaming the system. But it seems that the Chasidic community has been top dog in that department - proportionately gaining the most from this program by far.
Like I said, I don’t know how accurate or skewed this investigate report is. It could be that the Chasidic community is as pure as the driven snow. And that every dime they get is gotten honestly and used precisely as intended. That there is no intentional fraud and very little if any unintentional fraud. But I am hard pressed to believe that this is all just a bunch of lies and distortions. There is just too much in that story for me to believe that it is all misinformation.
That the Agudah has chosen to once again condemn the Times article as yet another unwarranted anti Chasid attack is understandable – but wrong. Defending innocent communities is a laudable thing to do. But when there is such an overwhelming number of questionable behavior reported, I suspect that there is something rotten in Denmark. Agudah needs to take a step back and find out what is true and what isn't. And then comment appropriately.
I know that times are tough. I am well aware of the high cost of a decent Jewish education. As I am of how difficult it is for virtually every religious school to pay for it. So many schools run deficits. All while putting tremendous pressure on parents to pay as much of their income towards full tuition as they can. Parents are squeezed for every dime. With the cost of living going up… so too does tuition - while increases in income often does not increase as much.
So I don’t blame schools desperate for survival and wishing to offer a quality education for looking for additional , more creative sources of revenue. But it cannot be through deception and theft. Because that is against Halacha and causes a major Chilul HaShem in the process. It also undermines the very ethics these schools have a moral obligation to teach their students. If what the Times discovered is in any way true these schools are not only guilty of fraud but by example, also teaching their children do the same thing as adults for their own children. And if that is the case, it is tragic.
