Quebec committee to look into chassidic schools

By JANICE ARNOLD Staff Reporter

MONTREAL — Charley Levy, the executive director of the Association of Jewish Day Schools, has been appointed to a Quebec government committee formed to study the “integration and reasonable accommodation” of children from minority groups within the province’s school system.
It’s expected that one of the issues the consultative body will examine is chassidic schools that are operating without a permit and whose students are not being taught the province’s mandatory curriculum.
Levy told The CJN that the education ministry has told him of three schools that are allegedly not obeying the law: the secondary schools for boys operated by the Skver and Belzer communities, and the Rabbinical College of Canada’s high school, which is under Lubavitch auspices. They have a total of about 400 students, he said.
The Skver school, Toldos Yakov Yosef, in Outremont was firebombed over the Labour Day weekend.
Not only are these schools unlicensed, they are not following the Regime Pedagogique. The Education Act stipulates that all children in Quebec from six to 16 years of age must be in a legal school program and taught the mandatory curriculum. This applies equally to schools receiving government funding or not, and to children who are home-schooled.
At the three schools in question, high school-age boys concentrate on religious studies.
These schools are not affiliated with AJDS, but their boys’ elementary sections, which are in the same buildings, and the girls’ elementary and high schools, have permits and teach the prescribed curriculum, Levy said.
Levy said he has had no personal discussions with those in charge of the three chassidic schools operating without a permit.
The consultative committee was announced Oct. 11 by Education Minister Jean-Marc Fournier and is scheduled to have its first meeting Oct. 30. Chaired by Bergman Fleury, a consulant in education and intercultural relations, it includes representatives of school associations, the Quebec Human Rights Commission, teachers’ unions, and the education and immigration and cultural communities ministries.
Besides Levy, the outside experts named are R’kia Laroui, an education professor at the Université du Québec à Rimouski, and Marie McAndrew, who holds the ethnic relations chair at the Université de Montréal.
Fournier said the main aim of the committee is to come up with guidelines and tools on how to “tactfully” reconcile situations where students’ religious and cultural beliefs and practices clash with “the values of Quebec institutions.” The committee has been also asked to formulate a clear definition of what constitutes reasonable accommodation of religious and cultural differences.
Fournier also alluded to the government’s determination that all children get the education set out in the law.
“It is a question of seeing that all youth receive the education to which they have a right while respecting their convictions, but equally respecting our laws, our democratic institutions and our traditions,” he said.
“It’s a right for them, an obligation of their parents and a priority for the government,” he said in a press release.
The committee is slated to issue its report in June.
Levy said he couldn’t comment on the committee’s mandate or what he would like to see it accomplish because, “at this point, I don’t know enough about it… I can’t even begin to comment until I see what is on our plate.” He expects to learn more at its first meeting next week.
He believes he was named because of his “sensitivity to the Jewish community” and lengthy experience in education.
Before coming to the AJDS in 2003, Levy worked for the former Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal and then the English Montreal School Board for a total of 37 years, including the last three years as the board’s director-general.
Last month, Federation CJA said it supports efforts to “regularize” the status of chassidic schools that may not be complying with the law.
“It goes without saying that all Quebecers are bound by the laws of society. The situation is clearly a delicate one involving the religious sensibilities of a particular segment of the Orthodox Jewish community,” federation first vice-president Marc Gold said in a statement.
“We are encouraged that the approach taken by the government is one of dialogue and discussion with the institutions and parents and we look forward to a satisfactory resolution of this issue.”
It would appear that the government has been aware of the situation at certain chassidic schools for years and tolerated it until francophone media reports about the schools’ legality appeared after the Toldos Yakov Yosef firebombing.
In fact, the situation likely existed long before the creation of the education ministry in 1964. The Rabbinical College, for example, was founded in 1941 by the late Rabbi Leib Kramer.
Alex Werzberger, president of the Coalition of Outremont Chassidic Organizations, called the whole issue a “red herring.”
With the exception of the Satmar schools, Werzberger said boys at all the Outremont area chassidic schools are following the provincial curriculum up to age 12 or 13.
After that, there are a couple of years where they are not, he admitted. After 15, the great majority of boys leave Montreal to go to New York, Israel and elsewhere to continue their studies, returning to Montreal when they marry, he said. Only a very small percentage remain in Montreal after 15, he said.
The girls of all ages are following the curriculum “to the letter of the law,” except for certain aspects of biology and sex education, Werzberger said.
“There was a deal made [with the government] years and years ago about this,” he said.
Werzberger, who is a member of the Satmar community, acknowledged that Satmar schools have not complied fully with the law at any grade level.
“They have refused, and for 35 or 40 years the government knew it, but closed their eyes. Now we have a problem, and I don’t know what can be done about it.”