Yaffed is a lobbying group, they don't create policy. Everyone knows that. But they are extremely effective. They have the ear of numerous politicians, and many influential folks in the media, the types of media personalities who harangue politicians about their pet issues and influence change. If we dismiss them as being mere lobbyists and not the ones who make change, they will move ahead with their agenda unopposed and be successful. If we give in and compromise today, they aren't stopping, they are going to continue to work to achieve all of their goals. This is not a slippery slope argument in the classic hypothetical sense, we know exactly what the slope is and where it leads to, because they are telling us!
I've made this point numerous times, but I'll say it again a bit differently. I am going to speak about Crown Heights as an example because that is what I know.
There are a number of schools to choose from, each with varying levels of secular education. The biggest boys' school doesn't teach any secular studies at all. That is quite shocking to many people outside of the community. And I get it. If you were to pick a Chassidic group that doesn't teach secular education based on their ideology and interaction with the secular world, I think 99 out of 100 people would not pick Chabad. The Rebbe himself was college-educated and wanted a school with no secular studies at all. (He was also in favor of some level of secular studies in just about every other school, so it is not an across-the-board philosophy by any means. If anything, this school is the exception, not the rule).
Remember I said it is the biggest school? It probably has more students than all the schools that offer secular studies combined. Can parents speak up? They can! And they do! Thank G-d new schools have opened and keep on opening. But that "no secular" school is growing too.
So now you tell me just like I have to follow traffic rules, I have to follow BOE rules, and the proposed rules are reasonable. Well, why should they be enforcing any rules at all? This school has been open since the '50s. It has tens of thousands of graduates. The school's alumni include professionals in just about every field you can imagine, religious leaders, medical, legal, accounting, arts, business, and leidigeir professionals. Many uber-successful, many not. But on the whole, there is no poverty problem among its alumni, there are none of the other social and criminal issues that often come with poverty-stricken communities, on the contrary! The community is thriving. The fact that Crown Heights is surrounded by communities that suffer tremendously from these issues is beside the point, but it does help to contrast the "no-secular" education system vs the public school system.
On what basis is the BOE trying to implement change? You want to compare it to abuse or other issues where children were being harmed and the community schools and infrastructure weren't doing anything/enough to stop it? Show me the "abuse". Show me how yeshivahs are producing incompetent, illiterate graduates who can't get gainful employment. Show me the delinquency.
You can't. No one can. What we can show is that tens of thousands of frum families pay a premium for private education. Their taxes go towards a public school system they get absolutely no use out of. They get relatively minuscule amounts of funding for various programs, but relative to the money being supplied by the community, it is negligible. Not only are yeshivah graduates doing ok, they are doing ok living a far more expensive lifestyle than the average public school family.
Crown Heights is a very open community. If parents are not happy, they speak up, and there is no mafia-like scheme that will get them blacklisted from the "community". If someone were to get "blacklisted" by one rov or institution, 3 others will come out in support of them within 5 minutes. Personally, I discuss issues at our schools with my friends almost every week. (incidentally, the group includes parents extremely passionate about providing a secular education for their kids) The idea that Yaffed is speaking on our behalf, or on behalf of people forced into silence is laughable. You'd be hard-pressed to find a single parent who supports them in any way.
Now, can the same be said for other communities? I don't know. I do know that virtually all schools have more secular studies than Crown Heights' biggest school. I also know that nondenominational schools have opened in Borough Park and grown quite fast (not sure about Williamsburg). Clearly, parents have more of a choice than Yaffed claims. And if there were so many parents clamoring for change, I'm damn sure you could get at least a couple to go on the record. There are people who have gone on the record for so many other topics, from eruvin, to agunos, to opposing Rebbes in communities where that leads you to be ousted without question. Why is secular schooling such a third rail, when it is something so many parents approve of as we can see by how many choose schools with secular education?
TLDR; I oppose any regulations on the yeshiva system whatsoever. Whatever my choice is to educate my kids is just that - my choice. If you feel like I'm abusing my child by denying them that education, you have decades of alumni to look at and prove that point. So long as you the BOE cannot prove that it is harmful, they have no business telling me how to educate my child.
*P.S. My son is currently in preschool, but he is enrolled in a school that *does* have a secular program, and as of now I don't foresee taking him out of the school. If I do, it won't have anything to do with the secular program. I don't even know if his school will be affected by the current proposed regulations. I don't care. I still vehemently oppose ANY regulations.