With New York State lawmakers reluctant to make a fourth
attempt to create a special school district for the
handicapped children of Kiryas Yoel, its leaders have been
looking for other ways of sustaining the school district,
according to a report in the New York Times..
Two weeks ago, school district officials in Kiryas Joel, an
upstate Jewish Chasidic village, wrote a letter to Dr.
William J. Bassett, the State Education Commissioner's
representative for Orange and Ulster Counties, asking him to
create a special district for them by resorting to a musty
law that has not been used in 80 years. However, sensing
little enthusiasm for such a gambit, they more recently
called Dr. Basset and withdrew the request.
"If the response was going to be negative, why go ahead with
it?" said Abraham Weider, the village's Mayor.
The request was an indication of the village's growing
desperation after the State Court of Appeals on May 11
declared unconstitutional the third effort by the Governor
and the State Legislature to create a special public school
district for the village's disabled children. The village's
only remaining hopes seem to be a reversal of the Court of
Appeals decision by the United States Supreme Court or the
increasingly slim possibility that the state will make one
more quixotic attempt to create a Kiryas Joel district that
can satisfy the courts.
The first attempt came in 1989, when Kiryas Joel, whose
15,000 residents are Satmar Chasidim, successfully petitioned
the State Legislature to create a public school district just
for it, contending that its disabled children, who wear
distinctive clothes, were exposed to ridicule when they
attended neighboring public schools to receive government-
financed services related to their disabilities. The 1989 law
was declared unconstitutional as amounting to a favor for a
single religious group. Subsequent attempts by the state in
1994 and 1997 to pass laws that avoided the favoritism
problem while creating a special district were also found to
be unconstitutional.
The latest Court of Appeals decision, rejecting the 1997 law,
has forced Kiryas Joel to take the case to the United States
Supreme Court, which may choose not to hear it. The Court of
Appeals gave Kiryas Joel until June 25 to get a preliminary
decision from the Supreme Court.
Mayor Weider met with state lawmakers in recent weeks and was
told that they were reluctant to draft a fourth law to create
a special district for Kiryas Joel when all three previous
laws were found unconstitutional. The lawmakers told him that
they preferred to wait for the Supreme Court ruling.
As a result, Mayor Weider decided for a time to rely on
Section 1504 of the State Education Law, a provision that is
more than 100 years old and has not been used in 80 years,
according to state officials. The statute allows certain
state education officials, like Dr. Bassett, to organize a
school district "whenever the educational interests of the
community require it."
In an interview last week, Dr. Bassett said he was not
inclined to create a district for Kiryas Joel, because he did
not feel comfortable resorting to an arcane law that would be
subject to the same challenges that have led the courts to
strike down the state's explicit Kiryas Joel statutes.
He then revealed that Kiryas Joel's school superintendent,
Dr. Steven Benardo had called him and said he was
unofficially withdrawing the request.
