New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio is offering religious preschools a deal. The city wants to provide preschool for 17,000 additional low-income children. Mayor De Blasio doesn’t want the cost of starting new preschools. So he wants the city to pay existing religious preschools to educate these students. That would make the religious schools tuition-free for those who qualify. The catch? Religious preschools would have to give up free speech for most of the day.
To receive maximum state funding, religious schools would have to devote six-and-a-half hours per day to secular curricula. Some religious preschools already accept partial state funding. They provide half-day religious-based programs that parents pay for. The other half is secular instruction paid for by tax dollars.
Mayor De Blasio wants these schools—and religious preschools that are not yet receiving state funding—to consider changing their programs. He offers two possible options that some participating schools have already adopted. Schools could begin a half-hour earlier in the morning. The day would start with religious instruction. Parents who do not want their children receiving religious training could bring them later. Another possibility is a mid-day break for religious training. Those not interested could be occupied with secular activities.
Some Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian schools question the wisdom of accepting the money. Can they really offer children religious training within these parameters? What are they teaching their students when they separate the secular from the religious?
Mayor De Blasio offers assurance that religious elements can still be included—as culture and history. But students could not participate in actual religious rituals. That leaves many questions. Could preschoolers participate in a Passover dinner as part of learning at Jewish preschools? Or would that be forbidden? Could Christian preschools put on nativity plays?
Even with breaks for religious instruction, De Blasio’s “free” tuition comes with a price. Preschools that take the cash agree to let the state of New York tell them what they can and cannot say in their classrooms. Free tuition may sound like a good deal. But the state’s money buys religious school’s silence on the worldviews the schools were founded to impart. Some say that sounds like the makings of a deal with the devil.
