Assemblyman wants better school safety enforcement

A state assemblyman from Rockland County is calling on the state to step up enforcement of safety regulations at private schools. Kenneth Zebrowski says many schools have failed to report on the findings

News 12 Staff

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Aug 19, 2015, 2:27 AM

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Updated 3,508 days ago

A state assemblyman from Rockland County is calling on the state to step up enforcement of safety regulations at private schools.

Kenneth Zebrowski says many schools have failed to report on the findings of fire inspections.

Earlier this year, Zebrowski proposed legislation that would deny grants to private schools that do not file recent fire safety reports with the state.

The Mosdos Sanz of Monsey, on Slinn Avenue in Spring Valley, is one of more than 60 schools in Rockland that had not filed those reports, as of July.

No one answered the door at the school when News 12 stopped by to get a response to Zebrowski's claims. The state assemblyman says failure to file those reports is a serious matter.

"When you have just the expansion of single-family homes into schools, you run into situations where they are just not structurally safe," he says.

Some of the schools on the list are in large buildings, but the ones Zebrowski is most concerned about are small schools operating in what are effectively private homes.

Rockland officials say they have been concerned for some time about the proliferation of private schools in the county.

Rockland County District Attorney Tom Zugibe's office would not comment on what they called a "pending investigation."