Seth Lipsky

Seth Lipsky

Opinion

De Blasio to the rescue of New York’s religious schools?

The abandonment by Gov. Cuomo and Speaker Sheldon Silver of parents of religious-school students has New Yorkers looking for a surprise hero. Hmmm. Could it possibly be, however unlikely on its face, Mayor de Blasio?

He strikes me as the leader to watch in the fight over what is called the Educational Investment Tax Credit, even though it’s a state issue.

The measure would open up a modest tax credit to parents who contribute to charities that support private schools, as well as to those who make donations to public schools.

Such a program is often spoken of in terms of Catholic schools. But it is a huge issue for yeshivas, too, as well as secular private schools.

It would reduce the penalty religious New Yorkers have to pay to give their children a religious education, a First Amendment right.

Yet the tax credit was missing from the budget deal Cuomo unveiled earlier this year. That deal was a win for charter schools and universal pre-kindergarten.

But religious schools, whose parents had been hoping for the education credit, were left out.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York, was stunned. He thought he had a deal with the governor. When it failed to materialize, he went public with his anger in a New York Post op-ed.

In theory, it can still be fixed before the Legislature goes home on June 19.

At least publicly, Jewish and Catholic leaders are still holding out hope for a deal. Privately they’re discouraged, even bitter.

They blame Speaker Silver, who is opposed to the tax credits as a matter of policy. A majority in the Assembly wants it. He doesn’t.

But they particularly blame the governor. He has been able to get his way with the speaker on things that he considers important. He has just shrunk from defending the religious parents.

So where, as they say in pool halls, is the bank shot? Could it be de Blasio?

This thought occurred to me last month at the annual banquet of the Agudath Israel of America, the largest grassroots organization of fervently religious Jews. Speakers and guests might include, say, a Supreme Court justice, a senator or a governor.

This year, neither the governor nor the Assembly speaker showed up; Mayor de Blasio did.

The New York Times has been on the mayor’s back about his appearance because he failed to quarrel publicly with the leader of the Council of Torah Sages, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, who criticized liberal Judaism and the movement for women rabbis.

The mayor, speaking afterward, made no comment on Perlow’s remarks, infuriating the Times (though how could the mayor have entered into doctrinal disputes?).

What struck me about the event was the warmth between de Blasio, the most progressive of all New York mayors, and the fervently Orthodox Jewish leaders. It turns out de Blasio represented Borough Park in the City Council.

They know — and seem to like — one another.

The mayor, moreover, offered blunt assurances to them on education. He didn’t address the tax-credit question, but he did pointedly say that his universal pre-K program would embrace the yeshivas. It was a signal that he understands how desperate are religious parents.

In the event, it’s not so clear that religious Jews can make use of the public pre-K program, for reasons that neither the mayor nor any public official can address. These have to do with the role of prayer in the kindergarten setting.

Yet such hurdles are not presented by the Education Investment Tax Credit that the governor and the Assembly speaker won’t help with. Such credits are in use in something like 19 states, without running afoul of the constitutional separation of church and state.

Is Mayor de Blasio the only leader in the state who is comfortable with the religious parents who are hoping for these tax credits?

The credits are, to be sure, a state matter, not the mayor’s responsibility. But if the credits fail, a long game will begin.

In recent years, after all, the city and state have increased by billions of dollars their outlays on a public-school system that many religious families can’t use.

If our leaders spurn altogether the needs of religious New Yorkers, our city and state could be in danger of losing their religious citizens.