How to end the public schools.
The New York State Catholic School Conference has proposed creating “foundations” that would have benefited all schoolchildren in the state, no matter whether the children attend a public or a “non-public” school. These foundations, not associated with any particular religion, would be themselves tax-free and contributions to the foundations, in lieu of tuition, would create tax credits for any parent sending their children to any school.
Of course the Orthodox Jewish community bought in to the Catholic proposal. After the proposal failed, Senator Simcha Felder told Vos is Neias “They literally took the non public school parents and said ‘Drop dead. We don’t care about you at all.’ “At the end of the day, we deserve the respect and consideration to be able get both tuition scholarships and programs that we need. We should not accept any crumbs that Albany offers to pacify us. Albany should be beholden to its tuition paying parents, not the unions and political power brokers.”
The new budget did contain at least one bright spot for Felder: the passage of his transportation bill which would provide permanent funding for private school students to receive the same busing benefits as their public school counterparts, with the maximum distance for bus stops reduced from 1400 to 600 feet.
Felder warned, “We get this game and we will not be quiet anymore.”