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New York State Education Department Seal

THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT / THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK / ALBANY, NY 12234

Deputy Commissioner Angelique Johnson-Dingle

Office of Instructional Support

55 Hanson Place, Suite 400, Brooklyn, NY 11217

(718) 722-3947

To: 
BOCES District Superintendents
Superintendents of Public School Districts
From: 
Angelique Johnson-Dingle, Deputy Commissioner P-12
Subject: 
Holocaust Survey
Date: 
October 13, 2022
On August 10, 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law Chapter 490 of the Laws of 2022 requiring a survey regarding instruction on the Holocaust within New York State public school districts.  Through the survey, superintendents are required to attest that the district is teaching about the Holocaust appropriately as part of classroom instruction aligned with the NYS Social Studies Learning Standards and §801 of Education Law.  A report of the findings of the survey will be delivered to the governor, the temporary president of the senate, the speaker of the assembly, the minority leader of the senate and the minority leader of the assembly.
 
The Holocaust Instruction Survey may be accessed through the SED Monitoring and Vendor Performance System in the NYSED Business Portal.  Survey questions and instructions for accessing the survey are included in the PDF version of this memo.
 
Survey responses must be submitted to the Department no later than 5:00 PM on November 10, 2022.
 
Per §3 of Chapter 490 of the Laws of 2022, each school district that does not respond to the survey or does not affirmatively attest that such instruction is provided, will be required to prepare and implement a corrective action plan (to be prescribed by the Department) to comply with the instruction required by law. The corrective action plan will be submitted to the Commissioner of  Education, with a certain timeframe for approval, form, and format that is acceptable to the Commissioner.
 
Section §801 of Education Law states that “in order to promote a spirit of patriotic and civic service and obligation and to foster in the children of the state moral and intellectual qualities which are essential in preparing to meet the obligations of citizenship … the Regents of The University of the State of New York shall prescribe courses of instruction in patriotism, citizenship, and human rights issues, with particular attention to the study of the inhumanity of genocide, slavery (including the freedom trail and underground railroad), the Holocaust, and the mass starvation in Ireland from 1845 to 1850, to be maintained and followed in all the schools of the state... All pupils attending such schools, over the age of eight years, shall attend upon such instruction.” The New York State K-12 Social Studies Framework requires instruction in the Holocaust at specific grade levels. While instruction of human rights and the Holocaust is discussed and taught throughout K-12, it is more explicitly taught in the 8th, 10th, and 11th grades when students learn about the horrors of the Holocaust, the Nuremberg Trials, and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
 
To support schools with instruction around the Holocaust within their instructional programs, the Office of Standards and Instruction has developed a Holocaust education resources page that includes examples of New York State, national, and international resources that could be used in the classroom. Please reach out to the Office of Standards and Instruction (emscurric@nysed.gov or 518-474-5922) if you have additional resources to share or questions related to this survey or to instruction related to the Holocaust.