Mayor Bill de Blasio was fully aware that officials in his administration tried to delay a report on the quality of education at yeshivas for his political benefit, according to a damning joint investigation that tied the stall tactic to de Blasio’s bid to extend mayoral control of the city’s school system.
“The joint investigation concluded that political horse-trading between the Mayor’s and State legislators’ representatives unquestionably occurred,” according to findings released Wednesday by investigators from the Department of Investigation a🌳nd the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools.
The findings were released just weeks after The Post reported in a front page article that SCI whistleblo🌊wers complained their probe into alleged City Hall interference, amo𒀰ng other cases, had been blocked to shield de Blasio during his presidential campaign.
City investigators scrutinized “whether there had been improper or inappropriate political interference in the DOE’s [yeshiva] inquiry by the mayor or꧂ other elected officials.”
“According to the investigation, the representatives agreed in 2017, as part of a multi-pronged effort, to delay an i𓃲nterim report of the DOE’s findings in an attempt to secure support for extending mayoral control of the city’s schooඣls,” the report said.
De Blasio himself w♛as informed of the “commitment to de🃏lay an interim report” scheduled for the summer of 2017 until April 2018.
“The report confirms everything we knew already — de Blasio plays politics with kids’ education,” charged political consultant Menashe Shapiro.
“Whether it’s additional charter space, closing failing schools and now helping yeshiva students meet the most basic minimal and remedial standards, de Blasio’s first instinct is to turn to his political patrons and protect their special interests rather than put children first. It’s why only in de Blasio’s New York could the future of mayoral control of public schools depend on an investigation into private yeshivas.”
The alleged politicaᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚl back-dealing happened in June 2017 just as the state Legislature was called to vote on extending mayoral control of city schools, a major priority for de Blasio. The interim report was eventually put off for a year.
“The mayor personally participated in conversations with at least one state senator and Orthodox community leaders about their broader concerns regarding oversight🧔 of yeshivas and how those concerns related to the extension of mayoral control,” the investigators f🌠ound.
The city’s politically powerful Orthodox Jewish community is at risk of losing funding for its religious schools, or yeshivas, if the report finds the education at those institutions is inadequate. De Blasio has enjoyed stro💙ng support from the community during his time in office.
Yeshiva education activists Naftuli Moster said the investigation “shows the city is willing to trade away the education of tens of thousands of students for power and political influence.
“These findings also raise concerns as to whether the City will provide an accurate assessment of what is happening inside Yeshiva schools when it finally releases its report,” Moster said.
Despite their best efforts, the de Blasio officials actually failed to delay the report — which was instead bogged down by other factors including conflicts with the yeshiva’s lawyers “and a generally accommodating approach taken by the DOE to that conflict,” according to investigators.
But the politic💟al pact did delay pub♑lic awareness of the fact that the DOE had only inspected six yeshivas in 2017 — two years into its inquiry.
“It is impossible to predict the effect, if any, of earlier public awareness of the status of DOE’s access to yeshivas, the yeshivas’ amenabilﷺity to mutually convenient inspections, and DO♐E’s approach to yeshiva inspection as a whole,” investigators said.
The probe determined the mayor was not personally involved in the agreement to delay the DOE report, 🍰“however, the totality of the evidence did indicate the Mayor was aw🃏are that the offer to delay had been made,” investigators said.
Investigators also couldn’t prove that anyone broke the law or committed criminal conduct, but they published their findings after determining they were “relevant to the ongoing public debate about government oversight of private religious schools.”
Complaints by alumni and parents of yeshiva students🦩 in 2015 prompted the DOE inquiry into 38 Hasidic yeshivas.
“There’s no ‘there’ there, as evidenced by the finding of no wrongdoing,” insisted mayoral spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein.
“The Department of Investigation and the Special Commissioner of Investigation made clear there were no findings ready for release in 2017. In fact, the DOI report accurately identifies why this process has taken so long, including ever-changing State regulations and the difficulty of gaining access to some schools.”
She said the final report🎃 will be released this week.
The DOE has visited all the yeshivas involved in tওhe inquiry, yet four years after the effort was launc🦄hed, city education officials have yet to publish a final report.
A DOE spokesman referred questions to the mayor’s office.