New Square - Yeshiva got millions in tech funds despite no student access to computers

An all-boys school in the Hasidic village of New Square has accepted more than $3.3 million in federal funds earmarked for Internet and telecommunications technology even though students there do not have access to computers, an investigation by the Manhattan-based The Jewish Week has found.

According to a Feb. 15 report published by the newspaper, Yeshiva Avir Yakov in New Square “is just one of many fervently Orthodox Jewish schools in New York State that, despite publicly eschewing Internet use and despite offering their students minimal, if any, access to computers, have spent large sums of E-rate money.”

The Hasidic community is “deeply concerned about the perceived social threat posed by the Internet” and views the web as “a corrupting force capable of undermining their way of life,” according to the newspaper.

The newspaper said it obtained video from inside Avir Yakov that showed no computers in classrooms, but the video was not posted on the paper’s website.

The report notes a rally about the dangers of the Internet at the Citi Field and Arthur Ashe stadiums in Queens last May that attracted 60,000 Orthodox Jews. What’s more, it says, the community’s schools require parents to sign waivers stating there is no Internet access in their homes as a precondition for enrollment.

E-Rate, a federal program that subsidizes telecommunications services and infrastructure for schools and libraries, paid more than $30 million to 285 Jewish schools in New York in 2011, according to the report.

The newspaper found that while Jewish schools enrolled approximately 4 percent of the state’s K-12 students, they were awarded 22 percent of the program’s allocations to schools and libraries that year.

The report arose from a four-month investigation in which Jewish Week reporters reviewed public records and technology requests submitted by the schools.

Since 1998, the newspaper found, Avir Yakov has received $3.3 million in aid, including $817,065 in 2011 and $209,423 in 2012. Requests in 2012 included, among other things, 65 direct connections to the Internet, phone service for 95 classrooms and more than 260 cell phone lines with data plans.

Avir Yakov representatives did not return requests for comment, according to the newspaper.

Avir Yakov is one of two local yeshivas that lease former public school buildings closed by the financially troubled East Ramapo school district. East Ramapo’s attempt to sell the public school buildings to the yeshivas have been stalled as state investigators scrutinized the deals, but a recent decision by state education Commissioner John King Jr. allows the sale of at least one building to move forward.

 

Officials say the sales would generate badly needed revenue for the public school district, which faces a multimillion-dollar deficit.

 

 

 

 

BY- MAREESA NICOSIA - Lohud