Jonathan Isler, the chief strategist/negotiator of the Orthodox Jewish plan to reduce Jewish-education tuition in Lawrence, New York, by involving the public school system, had a 2.5-hour meeting today with an assistant superintendent of Lawrence Public Schools.
Isler said that he set aside his initial proposal from the beginning, and that his larger, “revolutionary” proposal “apparently…opens up a whole heap of issues.”
His Plan C, which he’d not discussed publicly prior, was to develop a “way of leaving the yeshiva environment intact” by “having the public school teachers come to the yeshiva.” He said that the assistant superintendent’s “feeling was that that would be the most viable option.”
The major hurdles for the proposal moving forward, Isler said, are: a miminum-attendance requirement that mandates a certain quantity of hours in the public school per day, and a question of the efficacy of dual enrollment (one that is already dealt with for Orthodox special-education students in the district).
An issue I raised with him was the fact that, due to the nature of the private schools’ enrollment, the district would be providing education to students who are not residents of same. He said that he’d raised the question only toward the end of the meeting, but felt it could be gotten around by creating an inter-district partnership, by creating a multiple-scale tuition, or both.
And how would this plan cohere with the Establishment Clause? While Isler doesn’t consider himself an expert on the issues, he feels that the effective creation of a public school within the private school that is, at least on its face, non-discriminatory would get around that (obviously, the school could find itself obliged to welcome certain students who would rather not attend the Judaic school or pay tuition — a part of the hurdle we didn’t get to).
As an aside, the New York Jewish Week is running a story in tomorrow’s edition that is both out-of-date and underreported (neither of which would be a problem if the reporter, Gabrielle Birkner, had simply picked up the phone to call the primaries of the story). One thing she did do is gather comment from a relevant legal source — unfortunately, the quotes she uses speak exclusively to the communal phenomenon:

“It would raise all sorts of problems because the kids would be taught an ordinary English program in religiously mixed classes,� said Marc Stern, co-director of American Jewish Congress’ Commission for Law and Social Action.
“The proponents seem oblivious to the costs on raising Jewish children such mixing would involve,� Stern said, “and it would mean limudei kodesh [Judaic studies] would occur only late in the afternoon and at the price of all participation in extracurricular activities. It will produce, without fail, a generation of am aratzim [ignorant people].�

I’ll probably be speaking with Stern soon, now that Isler’s had his meeting, though for comment on a very different aspect of the proposal (Birkner’s quoting him on these rounds out her poor job of reporting).
At this point, we now have three thorough proposals from Isler to examine on legal grounds. I’d like to do that, and bring in some expert voices, in the coming days.
On the other hand, having seen the discussion in comments here, at Orthomom, Bloghead, and Hirhurim — and certainly Stern’s comments above are along these lines and Isler’s assertion that the intercultural mixing is the key hurdle for Orthodox approval both agree — it seems quite clear that a leading, if not the leading, assessment within the Orthodox community, right up to its most liberal stations, is not only content with self-ghettoization, but aggressively pursuing it on virtually as many avenues as are available. The idea that it is best that Orthodox children not have non-Orthodox and non-Jewish friends was not always so broadly assumed in the American Jewish community.

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