Orthodox Groups Back State Services to Children in Parochial Schools

Moses I. Feuerstein, president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, and Rabbi Israel Miller, president of the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox), issued a joint statement here today, endorsing a bill pending in the New York State Legislature that would provide special remedial services to children in private and parochial schools.

The bill, introduced in Albany by State Sen. Edward J. Speno and Assemblyman Arthur Hardwick, Jr., would offer to students in the private and parochial schools the same type of psychiatric, psychological and social guidance available now to children in public schools. Recalling that the Orthodox Jewish community is “traditionally opposed to Federal aid to parochial schools, ” Mr. Feuerstein and Rabbi Miller asserted that they favor the Speno-Hardwick bill because “we cannot permit the denial of help which would contribute to the mental health and adjustment of school children in schools they attend.”

In taking their stand, the Orthodox leaders differed sharply with the attitude of the American Jewish Congress, which opposes the Speno-Hardwick proposal. They asserted that the AJC “is becoming much too doctrinaire in its position on this and related issues of legislation which aids students in private and parochial schools.”