There are allegedly at least 40 hasidic kids between the ages of six and 12 living in Williamsburg and Borough Park, Brooklyn who don't have a yeshiva to go to because rabbis are using yeshiva placement as a club to punish the kids' families.

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg told me tonight that he personally knows of 40 such kids and that there are likely many more.

According to what I've heard, the city knows this. (It may not know the exact numbers, but it knows it is happening.) And likely the state knows, as well. But they allegedly aren't willing to cross the large hasidic bloc vote, and these kids are simply not being educated.

A parent I was told about enrolled her child in a public school after the yeshiva the child had previously attended would not take him back. The public school was shocked to see that an 8-year-old didn't even know the letters of the alphabet because he hadn't really been taught them in yeshiva. The child had no mental illness, no learning disabilities and doesn't have ADHD. When the yeshivas realized how dangerous this situation could be for them, the child suddenly got a yeshiva placement.

Why was the child  not given a yeshiva placement to begin with? There are lots of excuses, but in the end, it all seems to boil down to one fact that kid can't change, the name of one of his grandfathers.

The city and state appear to be turning a blind eye, both to haredi schools' failure to teach basic things like proper English usage (which we already know and have reported previously) and to rabbis' use of yeshiva placements as a club to hit parents who own the wrong cellphone, trim their beards – or, in some case, report alleged child sex abuse to police.

The city, the Brooklyn DA, the state and even the federal government all have legal action they could likely take against these rabbis and yeshivas.

Likely none – perhaps save for the federal government, if the action originates from Washington, DC (the Brooklyn US Attorney is notoriously unwilling to prosecute haredi crime) – will do it.