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March 3, 2000/26 Adar 1, 5760, Vol. 52, No.26
JCPA to oppose public funds for private schools
GABRIELLA BURMAN
AND NEIL RUBIN
The Baltimore Jewish Times
BALTIMORE - In what at first glance seemed more like a game show atmosphere than the serious business of making national Jewish policy, the more than 300 delegates to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs Plenum meeting here this week voted on an array of topics including ones criticized as irrelevant to a Jewish agenda that touched the hot buttons of American Jewish life.
Most notable, JCPA, an umbrella organization of 122 local and 13 national Jewish groups, hardened language against public funds being used for private schools.
By a vote of 318 to 259 (JCPA groups of various sizes are assigned different numbers of votes), the JCPA voted to eliminate its support, approved two years ago, for "designated, extant, court-approved, non-sectarian benefits" for private schools.
Now, the agency simply "reaffirms its vigorous opposition to the use of public funds to support private sectarian schools." It goes on to note that voucher plans and similar programs "violate the Establishment Cause" of the U.S. Constitution and "pose the risk of government entanglement in religious affairs."
Andrea Chasen of Springfield, Mass., said, "Such an exception leads to the rapid descent of the First Amendment and unwittingly invites government intrusion."
In general, the vote saw national agencies favor the change and local ones split on it.
Throughout the four-hour session, numerous participants admitted to becoming punchy over arguments oncommas and prepositions mixed with substantive language and a host of amendments. But it wasn't a game for many who came to the microphones to passionately defend their views.
Sammie Moishenberg of the National Council on Jewish Women referred to the Jewish community's low support of Jewish day schools despite its positive talk on the matter - as a shanda, or embarrassment.
Nathan Diament of the Orthodox Union called it "bizarre" that the JCPA would strengthen the wording against funding private schools when the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled otherwise.
Other resolutions passed included: calling on South Carolina to remove its Confederate flag from the statecapital; governors of states with the death penalty to push a statewide moratorium; a "living wage" for low-incomeworkers; and use of sought Holocaust reparation funds to support long term health care for Holocaust survivors.
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