Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company  
The New York Times
August 5, 1999, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section B; Page 5; Column 4; Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 552 words

HEADLINE: Albany Tries Again to Aid Hasidic Village

BYLINE:  By JOSEPH BERGER 

BODY:
Despite court rejections of three earlier laws intended to accomplish the same goal, the New York Legislature passed provisions in its budget bills early yesterday morning intended to provide funds for a public school district for handicapped Hasidic children in the upstate village of Kiryas Joel. A spokesman for Gov. George E. Pataki said he would sign the new provision.

The fourth Kiryas Joel initiative was passed overwhelmingly after midnight as the Legislature rushed to complete work on the budget.

The legislation does not identify Kiryas Joel by name. Rather it gives any town, village or municipality of 10,000 to 125,000 inhabitants that is contained within a larger school district the right to petition for creation of a discrete school district and to receive state assistance.

Any new district would have to be approved in one of two ways, by voters or by governing boards in the breakaway municipality and in the larger school district.

Governor Pataki's office said the terms of the new provision were broad enough to potentially affect 29 municipalities -- not just Kiryas Joel but Elmira, New Rochelle, Lockport, Middletown, Kingston, Saratoga, Westbury and others. There has been no indication that those municipalities have sought to secede from larger school districts.

Federal and state courts have thrown out earlier state laws passed on behalf of Kiryas Joel -- in 1989, 1994 and 1997. The courts found them unconstitutional because they amounted to a favor for a single religious group. The first law named Kiryas Joel specifically while the other two would have applied only to Kiryas Joel or just one other municipality in the state.

Michael McKeon, a spokesman for the Governor, said Mr. Pataki considered the new provision to give "school districts a menu of options for reorganization -- to annex, merge, partition, centralize or consolidate."

At a news conference, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was more willing to say that the provision was tailored for Kiryas Joel, a village of 15,000 Hasidim in the Monroe-Woodbury school district in Orange County.

The village's nonhandicapped students have always attended private yeshivas, but through the mid-80's, its handicapped children attended special education classes in Monroe-Woodbury schools. After the village decided that those children, with their distinctive appearance, were subjected to ridicule, it formed its own public school district and has sought state special education funds.

"Severely handicapped children need to be served," Mr. Silver said. "The surrounding school district, Monroe-Woodbury, has indicated they support a separate district. They don't want the burden -- I emphasize the burden -- of providing for those children. And knowing the culture and the heritage of the parents, those children would be kept in the closet, not provided services, if this district was not provided."

Dissidents within Kiryas Joel, who want the handicapped children educated in religious settings rather than secular public schools, no matter what the cost, were unhappy with yesterday's legislative actions. "This is a political kickback for a leadership which delivered them a bloc vote," said Joseph Waldman, the spokesman for a dissident faction of the Satmar Hasidim in Kiryas Joel.



 

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LOAD-DATE: August 5, 1999