There are those who say the time just isn’t right for tax credits. That’s because Albany is under a court order to change the way it hands out education aid. This complicated controversy, known as the “Campaign for Fiscal Equity,” is essentially an effort to get New York City a bigger piece of the state education pie. How can we pass tax credits, opponents say, when we still haven’t found a way to give New York City its fair share?
Truth is, New York City public school students already get about $13,000 a head. When the CFE dust settles, they’ll get $14,000 or $15,000 or whatever the courts decide. How much do private school students get? Six dollars a student. You read that right: six bucks a head. It costs me more to ride the Long Island Railroad. And they think they need a Campaign for Fiscal Equity.
Of course, there are those who say this is a perfectly reasonable system. After all, you don’t have to send your children to a religious school. And since you have the option of sending your kids to public school, you suffer no discrimination.
Try this logic with any other group and you’ll see just how obscene it is. Suppose there was a program that benefited a broad group of citizens but was eliminated because it also benefited students at African-American universities. Picture the outcry if the governor argued that there was no discrimination involved since the students don’t have to go to an African-American university – they have the ability to go to a public university. And now ask yourself where the ACLU would stand on that one.
As matters currently stand, an illegal alien gets a government-paid education, while school parents can’t even keep their own money because some of them will spend that money in a religious institution (entanglement!). On the food chain of education policy, we don’t even rank as high as illegals.
The right of illegal aliens to get a free education is another one of those things that’s not just legal but constitutional. In the 1982 case Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute that barred school enrollment to illegal aliens. The court ruled that the “innocent children” were protected under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Or, to put it another way, just because they are in the country illegally doesn’t make them any less equal than anybody else. Whether you agree with the ruling or not, you can’t help but feel proud to live in a country where “innocent” illegal aliens (“innocent” and illegal?) can get their day in court.
I just wish the courts would save a little of that compassion for us. About fifteen years ago, the residents of Kiryas Joel tried to create a school district of their own. No, they didn’t try to turn public schools into yeshivas. The idea was to allow children with Down Syndrome to get services that parents otherwise couldn’t afford. In truth, the whole arrangement was nothing more than an attempt to meet one legal sleight of hand with another. An earlier case held that public school teachers couldn’t give special education to religious children in a private building (entanglement!). By creating a “school district,” the same building became “public” and services became legal.
Or so everyone thought. In Kiryas Joel v. Grumet, the Supreme Court ruled that the arrangement was unconstitutional. The ourt that showed so much compassion for illegal children couldn’t find any for legal religious ones – even those with special needs. Law professors will tell you that I’ve presented an apples/oranges comparison and maybe they’re right. But refusing to give vital services to mentally retarded children – out of fear that doing so would establish Satmar chasidism as the religion of the land – is so silly it can only make sense to an intellectual. Justice Scalia probably got it right in the dissent when he said that the Kiryas Joel case “announces a positive hostility to religion.”
