Walter Roth, president of the American Jewish Congress Council of Greater Chicago, said here that the Supreme Court’s voiding of the Pennsylvania and Rhode Island aid-to-private-schools plans “clearly applies to the legislation recently enacted by the Illinois legislature granting $30 million in state aid to non-public schools,” Roth said the “logic” of the Court’s decision “casts grave doubts on the constitutionality of any type of aid other than for construction, textbooks and bus transportation.” The Court, he said, has by its ruling “averted” the “danger” of the “imminent collapse” of the public school system “because of an apparent willingness to fund private schools with public dollars and hasten the exodus of the middle class from the public schools.”
Roth said the ruling “cannot help but strengthen religious liberty, for it assures the American citizen that his tax funds may not be used to support a religion in which he does not believe.” The AJCongress official promised that the organization would “redouble our efforts in urging the Jewish community to increase its support for Jewish education and Jewish schools,” and would “continue to support all efforts to increase public aid for public education.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
