Opinion

Give kids credit

Each year our pols grant $4.6 billion in tax credits to beer companies, movie moguls and the like. But for poor kids in New York schools? Not one nickel.

That’s a point parents, religious leaders and reformers are making in an 11th-hour push for a tax credit for donors who help these kids financially. It’s a good point, too.

With this year’s legislative session ending Thursday, the state’s Catholic Conference is out with a memo addressing criticisms.

It notes donors would qualify regardless of income, public schools would enjoy half the benefit and no one could “profit” by combining state and federal tax benefits — as Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver claims.

The conference also cites the $4.6 billion in credits our pols gladly dole out annually for industries from brownfield redevelopment to beer brewing. It sums up Albany’s priorities this way: “ ‘Wolf of Wall Street,’ yes. Scholarships for poor children, no.”

Now, we’ve never seen the logic of multimillion-dollar subsidies to wealthy film companies or other special pleaders, especially at the expense of mom-and-pop hardware stores, dry cleaners or bodegas.

Our education spending is likewise misplaced.

Today, the Empire State spends the most per child of any state. But only a third of our kids graduate high school ready for college or a career. Instead of pouring more good money down this drain, this credit would empower citizens to help children escape failing schools.

This weekend, Timothy Cardinal Dolan is sending a plea to 2 million churchgoers, urging them to ask Gov. Cuomo to “put children ahead of politics and fight for the Education Investment Tax Credit.”

We’re with him. If Jimmy Fallon can get a big fat tax credit for his TV show, why not for a citizen giving a New York kid a lifeline to a school where he or she will learn?