Hundreds of school children appeared suddenly on the rainy streets of Borough Park on Tuesday morning. With backpacks in tow, they walked from stoops to yellow school buses, disembarking outside the propped open doors and back entrances of the neighborhood's yeshivas. They moved quickly, heeding the warnings they'd been given to arrive on time or be turned away.
Facing an uptick in coronavirus test rates, Governor Andrew Cuomo mandated last week that roughly 300 public and private schools inside nine hotspot zones transition to all-remote learning. Newly-reopened public schools, some of which don't have any confirmed cases of the virus, reluctantly complied.
But many private yeshivas are spurning the shutdown order in the ultra-Orthodox stronghold of Borough Park, home to one of the highest infection rates in the city, Gothamist has learned.
According to one parent, nearly all of the private yeshivas in the neighborhood have ignored Cuomo's closing order. He said that each of his six children had attended school in the neighborhood this week, adding that it was "mostly out in the open."
"It doesn’t look like the government is planning to do any enforcement, so they’re not too worried," said the parent, who asked for anonymity to avoid consequences for his children. "It’s not like the mayor or governor don't know what’s going on. They don’t want to do anything about it."
After all city schools were shuttered during the first wave of the virus, many yeshivas continued operating, earning "verbal warnings" and citations from city authorities.
A young man boarding a school bus in Borough Park on Tuesday morning
Heshy Friedman, a 57-year-old Borough Park resident who opposes the lockdown measures, said some of the schools had taken step to conceal the illegal instruction, such as encouraging kids to avoid wearing uniforms or using separate entrances.
"None of the yeshivas see this as a closing," Friedman said.
Outside the Bnos Zion of Bobov yeshiva on 14th Avenue — squarely in the state's most restrictive "red" zone — dozens of school buses circled the block on Tuesday morning. The private school, which enrolls some 1,800 students, has not reported any data to the state's COVID report card. Inquiries to the school were not returned.
At the Bais Esther yeshiva next door, another group of students arrived for illicit instruction on Tuesday morning. Asked why in-person classes were still taking place, a secretary who answered the phone at the school told Gothamist, "I don't really want to answer you right now," then hung up.
None of the city's enforcement agencies were spotted over the course of the morning. A truck belonging to the Shomrim, the Jewish security patrols, was parked outside the two schools.
School children at the entrance of a Borough Park yeshiva last year.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has faced continued scrutiny from Cuomo and city residents about his selective enforcement of the new rules. "A law doesn’t work if you’re too incompetent or too politically frightened to enforce it,” the governor said last week.
According to a City Hall spokesperson, the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement and the NYC Health Department are charged with ensuring compliance at private and public schools. Neither the NYPD nor the Sheriff's Office are involved in the effort, despite being tasked with enforcement at synagogues and other gathering spaces.
“City inspectors are working closely in the community to enforce state guidelines and make sure schools in hot zones are closed," mayoral deputy press secretary Mitch Schwartz said in a statement. "As the mayor said this morning, this is a critical week – and we’ll continue doing everything we can to keep New Yorkers safe and prevent a further outbreak.”
It wasn't immediately clear whether any yeshiva had been issued a citation for remaining open. The resistance to closing follows a busy holiday weekend in Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, as hundreds of people packed into synagogues and partied in the street in spite of the state ban on gatherings.
The coronavirus positivity rate in Borough Park is nearly five times the citywide average.
For Suzanna Riordan, an adjunct professor at CUNY, the phased-in lockdown has meant that her daughter's school, which sits at the edge of the governor's intermediary "orange" zone, was forced to close last week without a single confirmed case of COVID-19.
She said her child was emotional and disappointed to be missing out on in-person learning once again, and that "a lot of families are feeling the same way."
That private yeshivas could continue hosting in-person instruction, while public schools like P.S. 130 remained closed, only added to her frustration. "It just doesn't seem fair," she said.
