The NY Sun reports:
Several religious groups are fighting a health department proposal that for the first time would require permits for some faith-based nursery schools.
Representatives of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Agudath Israel of America, among others, voiced their concerns at a public hearing April 19 on the health department's proposed amendments to article 47 of the city's health code, which regulates child care services.
The measures, which officials said were designed to improve child safety, would require about 500 nursery programs to obtain city permits, meet certain education standards among teachers, and conduct criminal background checks on their employees for the first time. Currently, religious preschool programs that are attached to elementary schools are exempt from permit requirements, thanks to their longstanding "No Permit Required" status.…
Why the opposition from Agudah?
"The concept of permitting is offensive to us because the permit process encompasses many things that relate to what actually takes place in the religious classroom," an executive vice president of Agudath Israel, David Zweibel, said. "Who is fit to be a teacher? How many students can there be in the classroom? Things that go to the autonomy of the educational experience, which to us in the religious community is a matter of religious freedom."
Of course, it might just be that several haredi teachers would fail those background checks.
Even after Baltimore and the various Brooklyn scandals, including the Rabbi Yehuda Kolko travesty, Agudath Israel has still not learned its lesson. As I have written many times, the only way thugs like Zwiebel will learn is if they are hit hard in the pocketbook or jailed.