Copyright 1994 The Buffalo News  
Buffalo News (New York)
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July 8, 1994, Friday, City Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 667 words

HEADLINE: CATERING TO RELIGIOUS SECT WAS A BIG ALBANY MISTAKE;
LEGISLATORS, CUOMO JOINED IN WRITING BAD LAW

BODY:
IT'S UNFORTUNATE that one of the few issues on which Gov. Cuomo, Senate Republicans and Assembly Democrats could ignore differences and agree is one that will do the state absolutely no good.

In fact, their bid to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court to help a tiny but politically astute religious sect may do real harm.

For one thing, it erodes critical barriers between church and state. For another, it opens the door to the creation of more school districts in the state at the very time efforts should be focusing on consolidation.

For both reasons, state residents should be questioning why their representatives were spending time figuring ways to cater to a small religious group while being unable to resolve a number of other matters that could have benefited the state as a whole.

The Legislature's interest in this arcane issue was aroused by the Supreme Court's recent decision that a public school district created especially to benefit an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group in the Orange County Village of Kiryas Joel was unconstitutional.

Cuomo and the Legislature had created the district in 1989 specifically to provide handicapped education for about 200 Hasidic children. Their parents wanted the taxpayer-funded service but didn't want their kids to attend public schools.

The court correctly ruled that creating such a district serving only the Hasidic children amounted to unconstitutional state favoritism toward one religious sect.

Undeterred, Cuomo and the Legislature seized on a comment from one justice who
said the district might be constitutional if created under a law applicable to any community, not just Kiryas Joel. Grasping at that judicial straw, the public officials came up with legislation allowing any municipality that meets certain criteria to establish a new school district.

But while tailored to help the Jewish students in Kiryas Joel, those criteria also could allow new districts in up to 60 other communities in the state.

That flies directly in the face of the recognition that with more than 700 districts consuming more than $ 21 billion in state and local funds each year, New York already is awash in school districts. It moves entirely in the wrong direction to concoct a mechanism that, no matter how narrowly tailored, might let localities create more.

No one is compelled to go to public school if their religious beliefs dictate otherwise. But by the same token, those who want the benefits public education offers -- including special education -- bear the burden of making whatever accommodation is necessary to take advantage of the same access all state residents have.

Going to such extraordinary lengths to accommodate one religions group turns that principle on its head and flies in the face of the intent of the U.S. Constitution. It also raises the specter of more school districts in a state that already has far too many.

The Legislature could have found something much more beneficial to do with its time.

LOAD-DATE: July 10, 1994