Copyright 1989 The New York Times Company  
The New York Times
July 21, 1989, Friday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 3; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1315 words

HEADLINE: Village Wants Hasidic Public School District

BYLINE: By ELIZABETH KOLBERT, Special to The New York Times

DATELINE: KIRYAS JOEL, N.Y., July 20

BODY:
After years of battling local school officials over how far they should go to accommodate religious beliefs, this Hasidic village has come up with a bold plan: to create its own public school district serving only Hasidic children.

Residents, who already send nearly all of their children to religious academies, say they have no intention of setting up a full public school system. Instead, they argue, creating a new district would allow them to obtain state funds to educate their children who are mentally or physically handicapped without sending them to nearby public schools that they find alien.

Politically, there is little opposition to the plan, which was approved by the State Legislature this month and is awaiting action by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. But the plan may raise fundamental legal questions.

Many legal experts, who say there are few precedents for the measure, contend that it strains and possibly even violates the constitutional limits on the relationship between church and state. And groups ranging from the American Jewish Congress to the New York State Education Department have urged Governor Cuomo to veto it.

''What you are in effect setting up is a school district established along religious lines,'' said Marc D. Stern, a lawyer for the American Jewish Congress. ''It may well be unconstitutional. It is also very bad precedent.''

If the Governor approves the bill, Mr. Stern said, ''every ethnic group in the state could go to the Legislature and say we want a separate school district. There are parts of New York where you would have Polish schools, Haitian schools, Puerto Rican schools.''

The district would not bar students who are not Hasidic, but all of Kiryas Joel's 8,000 residents are Hasidic. The village, in Orange County about 50 miles north of Manhattan, was carved out of the town of Monroe more than a decade ago. And the move to create a separate school district here is the latest in a battle over the education of physically and mentally handicapped children that is almost as old as the village itself.

At the heart of the dispute is the question of how far the public school system is obliged to go to accommodate students' religious and cultural differences.

Officials of the Monroe-Woodbury school district, which serves Kiryas Joel, have argued that the village's handicapped children, estimated to number anywhere from 100 to 300, must attend special programs in the public schools and must be integrated as much as possible into regular school programs.
 
Special Dress and Customs

But parents have refused to send their children into the public schools, asserting that the children's special dress and customs would make them outcasts in the schools. Instead, they have pressed for special education programs to be provided at a ''neutral site,'' a building that is neither a regular public school nor a religious school and where no religious education could take place.

In the meantime, parents have kept these children out of the public schools, trying to provide the special services they need through tutors, therapists sent to the village by the school district, and other means.

Last year, the battle went before New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, which ruled that while the district could provide the programs at a neutral site, it could not be compelled to do so. The school district continued to insist that the children attend public school.
 
'In Dire Need of Education'

Since then, residents in both Kiryas Joel and the surrounding communities have been fighting for a separate district.

''We've tried every other game in town to resolve this issue,'' said Abraham Wieder, who has led the fight for a separate district and whose daughter suffers from a severe hearing loss. ''These handicapped children are in dire need of education.''

Parents in Kiryas Joel have pledged that the school for the handicapped children would be run in accordance with state law, meaning that despite Hasidic tradition, boys and girls would be taught together. The children in the special education school would be eligible for state education aid; the children in the religious schools would not.

Officials of the local school district, weary of the legal skirmishes, have enthusiastically endorsed the plan for a new district.

''It's a practical solution to a unique set of circumstances,'' the assistant superintendent of the Monroe-Woodbury school district, Terrence Olivo, said. ''Everyone will come out ahead.'' The battle over the handicapped children is not the only issue that has divided Kiryas Joel and the rest of the school district. Three years ago the village sued the district to provide male bus drivers to transport its boys to school; religious law prohibits them from traveling with female drivers. Since a Federal court ruled for the district, boys have since walked to school or been driven by their parents.

Supporters of the plan argue that it would not create a school district for a religious group but rather for a municipality. In 1977, after residents ran afoul of local zoning laws, Kiryas Joel was incorporated as its own village.
 
Particularly Vigilant

Many legal experts question whether a Kiryas Joel school district could withstand a constitutional challenge. Even though Kiryas Joel is its own village, they point out, the planned formation of the school district is motivated by religion, not geography. And the United States Supreme Court, experts note, has been particularly vigilant in enforcing the separation of church and state in public schools.

''We strongly suspect that both the purpose and the primary effect of creating a separate school district for the village of Kiryas Joel is the promotion of religion in violation of the establishment clause'' of the Constitution, said Donna Lieberman, the associate director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a memorandum in opposition to the measure.

Lawrence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School, said that while the new school district was ''certainly not automatically unconstitutional,'' it did raise constitutional questions.

Mr. Tribe said that there were few court precedents for the measure and that they left open the question of its legality. In one case, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that Amish children, because of their religion, could not be required to attend high school. In another case, a Federal court in Oregon ruled that a city in the state, Rajneeshpuram, formed by a religious sect, was invalid.
 
Political Pressure

It is Governor Cuomo's policy not to comment on bills that are before him, and a spokesman, Gary Fryer, said today that the Governor declined to say whether he would approve the new district. By law, he must act on the measure by next week.

Mr. Cuomo is under significant political pressure from the Hasidic communities here and in Brooklyn - which send thousands of voters to the polls at election time - to approve the new district. But he is also under heavy pressure from his own Education Department to veto it.

''To segregate children based on ethnic, religious and cultural lines is very destructive in a society where people have to live together,'' said Karen Norlander, a lawyer for the State Education Department. ''It's a very troubling thought that any school district would be proposed along such insular lines.''

Officials at the Education Department say that they agree with residents of Kiryas Joel that their handicapped children should not be forced to attend public schools but should be able to receive an education at a neutral site. The answer to the village's problems, they say, lies in working with the local school district, not in separating from it.

''We don't work out differences by creating walls,'' Ms. Norlander said. ''This is the least acceptable route to solving the problem.''

GRAPHIC: photos of a shopping center in Kiryas Joel, N.Y.; Terrence Olivo (NYT/Eddie Hausner) (pg. B4)