Last week, YAFFED, a group ostensibly concerned with improving education, filed a motion to submit an amicus brief supporting the New York State Board of Regents’ new amendment limiting the rights of nonpublic school children with special needs and their ability to obtain services.
In July 2024, the Board of Regents passed an amendment to limit parents’ right to due process hearings. For decades, due process hearings have been the way most parents whose children have special needs and attend a yeshiva or nonpublic school in New York City obtained services for their children. The amendment was passed on an emergency basis, bypassing the typically required 60-day public comment period.
When diplomacy proved insufficient, Agudath Israel and 10 parents sued the Board of Regents and the New York State Education Department. In October, a NY Supreme Court judge granted a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) suspending the amendment, deeming the harm so immediate and irreparable as to merit this form of relief.
Agudath Israel has hired two external law firms to advance this lawsuit and pursue a permanent injunction against this amendment.
YAFFED tenuously claims an interest in this case due to its “experience with the New York State’s Education Department (NYSED) and the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) as well as its institutional knowledge and desire to see the needs of special education yeshiva students met…”
YAFFED agrees that “petitioners [Agudath Israel and parents] are rightfully concerned about access to special education services for the students of private schools,” and concedes, “in fact Petitioner Agudath was heavily influential in expanding access to special education services to the benefit of children in need.”
Yet, bizarrely, it exhorts the court to be deferential to the “broad discretion” of the Commissioner of Education and uphold the regulation that hinders special needs students from receiving critical support.
In a NYC Council public hearing a month ago, YAFFED testified that, “Only schools that provide adequate instruction in ALL required subjects should receive special education funding.” This testimony is telling of YAFFED’s position and potentially damaging to the special needs community of nonpublic schools.
Agudath Israel has legally opposed the admission of YAFFED’s insertion into this case and will continue to advocate through the courts and the legislature to protect the rights of children with special needs.
{Matzav.com}
Yaffed is amaliak. They are just as bad as Hamas terrorists. I hope and pray for their demise. May they all suffer horrible deaths.
The corrupt thinking of YAFFED is exposed with this disgusting effort to deny services to special needs children. I look forward to the huge public shaming of YAFFED and its supporters. Would be nice to hear the the thugs who run this organization become ones who would need to benefit and are blocked by their own behavior. These people are evil and are public menaces to the frum community.
What rishus.
Why in the world would anyone, especially a Jewish person, go out of their way to harm an innocent, special needs child? This level of cruelty, of wickedness, just blows me away.
These reshaim are like the biryonim that caused the destruction of both batei mikdash. In the case of the first, for the biryonim to force the Jews to fight, against what the rabbanim held which was to make peace, the biryonim burnt down years of produce in Jerusalem, reducing the city to mass starvation which caused the horrors of “im tochalna nashim piryam”and more, R”L.
So, because these reshaim don’t want parents sending their kids for an education that these reshaim consider to be sub-standard, they are trying to block those schools from getting Special Ed services, one more way of trying to force their closure.
Yaffed is made up of a bunch of losers who couldn’t make it and they’re blaming the Yeshiva system for it. They should be ashamed of themselves.