New York, NY - City Adds Funds For Jewish Schools

New York, NY - The New York City government is starting quietly to fund local parochial schools.

The City Council is allocating $1 million of taxpayer money in this year's budget to purchase school buses for Jewish schools.

Because the money is tucked into the council's thick budget, and because the amounts are small relative to the $15 billion a year spent on the city's public schools, most public school advocates and education experts said that they had not heard about the funding.

Under state law, the city is obligated to provide the same transportation for parochial school students as for public school students. The city this year is giving an Orthodox Jewish group, Agudath Israel of America, $1 million to distribute to Jewish schools to buy their own buses.

The funding for the buses came at the behest of a Democratic City Council member, Simcha Felder, who represents the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Boro Park in Brooklyn.