According to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, the city’s new budget, agreed to today, now includes the restoration of full funding for Priority 7 after-school vouchers for the next six months. Agudath Israel of America had spearheaded a campaign to see that the approximately $15 million per annum funding for the vouchers, which had been eliminated in an earlier budget proposal – and whose elimination would have hit the Orthodox Jewish community disproportionately hard – would be reinstated. Last week, Agudath Israel delivered 30,000 letters from parents of students in Jewish schools to City Hall (reported HERE on YWN).
“This happy development,” said Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel, “shows that the concerns of our community were taken seriously by our elected officials.
“This is heartening news for the approximately two thousand parents who, thanks to Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership, will now be able to continue to benefit from these vouchers, at least for the next half year. But it is also a lesson to us all that, when we identify a community need and work together, our voices count.”
At the end of six months, sources in the budget process say, the issue will be revisited and a decision made about further extending funding for the vouchers.
(Moshe Altusky – YWN)
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One Response
Perhaps we should encourage the R. Zwiebel to talk to the people who don’t want an increase in taxes or fees.
When you consider the option will be to radically cut vital services (emergency medical care, police, fire, etc.), perhaps afterschool care isn’t what the government should focused on. While wanting our share of the “pork” is understandable, getting rid of the “pork” might be better in the long run (today’s Washington Post said that Obama is refusing to bail out state governments, so several state, probably including New York, and led by California are playing a game of “chicken” in hopes the federal government blinks first).