By now, the emails have started. Orientation, supply lists, the first tuition installment. This time of year is when the school year stops being an idea and turns into a budget.
This year, families across New York could soon have a new source of help. The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit Program would allow eligible families to access scholarships for educational expenses, from tutoring and after-school programs to special-education services and tuition, if New York opts in.
And some of the parents asking Albany to do that are not who you might expect.
Yifang Chen is a working mother from Queens, N.Y., with two children in the city’s public schools. “With rising costs all around us,” she wrote, “this program would really help my family afford much-needed after-school programs.”
Chen’s children attend public school. And that is precisely the point. This program is not just about yeshivah families or private school tuition. Families across New York are looking at the rising cost of giving their children the support they need, which is why Chen is standing alongside a broad alliance of public and nonpublic school families asking New York to opt in. That is worth paying attention to.
I spend my days advocating for Jewish schools and the families who choose them. What has been striking this summer is how many outside our community are doing the same math. A parent pricing out a math tutor. A mother whose workday does not end at three. Public school may be tuition-free, but raising and educating a child is not. The schools are different. The math is often surprisingly similar.
That shared challenge is why we launched Scholarships for All NY, a statewide alliance bringing together dozens of organizations, from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce to the New York State Catholic Conference and PLACE NYC, to urge Gov. Kathy Hochul to opt New York into the new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit Program once federal regulations are finalized.
Even if 30% of eligible New York taxpayers participate, the program could generate about $1.5 billion a year for New York students, helping pay for a reading tutor, a bus route, a speech therapist twice a week, an after-school program or tuition. Roughly 2.8 million students in public and nonpublic schools would be eligible.
Now consider what happens if New York sits this out.
New Yorkers could still claim the federal credit but would direct it to scholarship organizations serving students in participating states. New Yorkers would be the ones left out. That’s a hard thing to explain to a parent packing a lunch this week.
I know the objection because it is being made loudly right now: that a program like this drains public education and that any dollar moving through a scholarship organization is a dollar taken from a public school classroom. It comes from people who care about children, and it deserves a real answer.
Here is mine. This program does not touch New York’s education budget. The credit is federal; it exists whether or not we participate, and Albany appropriates nothing to fund it.
Chen’s children are in public school. If she gets help paying for an after-school program, no classroom in this state loses a dollar. In Arizona, which has run a version of this for years, roughly 70% of participating donors chose to support public school programs.
For Jewish families, back-to-school season brings its own set of financial pressures. There is the excitement of children returning to the rhythms of Jewish learning. There is also the tuition bill, transportation and the special-education services a child is entitled to but does not always receive. As Jonathan Katz, a parent at the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach, N.Y., put it, tuition keeps rising while schools spend more just to keep children safe, and families still want to raise their children in a way that is true to who they are.
The newest of those costs is security. Jewish schools now spend an average of more than $400,000 a year on it, up 124% in three years. Every dollar spent keeping children safe is a dollar not spent teaching them, and tuition closes the gap. No family chose that trade.
Within our own community, the range of support for Scholarships for All NY says something too. Federations and advocacy organizations. The Orthodox Union and the Sephardic Community Federation. Neighborhood councils in Borough Park and Canarsie. They represent very different parts of Jewish New York, and they are on this letter together.
In all my years doing this work, this is one of the first times we have come together in a formal campaign of this scale with families and organizations far beyond our own community. We are not asking only for Jewish schools or Jewish families. We are asking—as public and nonpublic school families, Jewish and non-Jewish communities, business leaders and faith groups—for something that can help all of our children. That makes the alliance stronger and the opportunity bigger.
Hochul has already signaled support for bringing this opportunity to New York, becoming only the second Democratic governor in the country to do so. That leadership deserves recognition. Once the federal regulations are final, we hope she will take the next step and formally opt the state in.
Her decision will matter beyond New York. As one of the country’s most prominent Democratic governors, what Hochul does could help shape how other Democratic-led states approach this program. New York has an opportunity not only to bring these scholarships to its own students, but to show that helping families afford the education and services their kids need is not a partisan issue.
In a few days, the forms will be in, the buses will be running, and another year will be underway. Yifang Chen is asking for help covering after-school care for two kids in public school. Jonathan Katz is asking for help keeping Jewish education affordable for his family.
New York can answer both of them with the same decision. And if it does, other states may follow.
New Yorkers can read and sign the alliance’s open letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul at: ScholarshipsForAllNY.com.
