Photo Credit:
Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte

Do you want to know the best way to break this legislator’s heart? Show me parents straining to ensure quality education for their children and being unable to shoulder the financial burden.

This is why I teamed up with Assemblyman Sheldon Silver to co-sponsor educational tax credit legislation for all parents, bill A6318, in the New York State Assembly two months before Governor Cuomo’s proposal.

Advertisement




My bill gives a tax credit of $500 per child for every family whose child attends yeshiva, parochial, private, or public school for tuition, daycare, and after-school tutoring services. Governor Cuomo’s current education tax credit bill offers tax credits only to families earning an income of $60,000 or less. Imagine this: a family with 7 children earning just more than $60,000 per year would not be eligible, while a family with only one child earning $60,000 would be!

For example, under my bill, if Jane Doe has four children and all of them are enrolled in a yeshiva, she will get up to $6,000 of tuition in tax credit: up to $500 per child for school tuition in addition to $1,000 per child like everyone else. Of course, the costs of tuition are much higher than those amounts, but it is a step in the right direction. However, if she is making $60,001.00 a year, the governor’s bill would not help Ms. Doe.

The governor’s proposal also offers $70 million in tax credits to corporations and individuals in the form of a scholarship in schools they (the investors) choose to fund. Most schools, especially the poor ones, do not have relationships with these wealthy donors. Plainly, the schools that need the funding most are the least likely to be funded by the governor’s proposal.

I call upon the governor to support the better proposal: Assembly Bill A6318, of which I am a co-sponsor along with 35 other assemblymembers.

As I happily co-sponsor this piece of legislation and build support for it, it is incomprehensible to me that some neighboring legislators representing tuition-paying constituents have refused to back my $500 per child tax credit, and instead back the governor.

Some well-meaning activists questioned my commitment to providing tuition relief to private and parochial school parents. Their reason? I oppose the Cuomo plan, which enriches millionaires and some very poor families but leaves out the middle class. As details of the governor’s plan became known in my district, my neighbors shouted: Please get us a bill that doesn’t pick winners and losers but one that helps everybody! Which is why I proudly support a bill that helps everyone equally – $500 tax credit per student – without regard to income level.

In the heat of the moment sharp words may be uttered, but my unwavering commitment to the Jewish community should never be questioned.

I am a lifelong friend to the Jewish community and have maintained close contact and worked with Jewish friends and neighbors throughout my life. I was thrilled when the Council Of Jewish Organizations (COJO) of Flatbush honored me with its Freshman Legislator of the Year award. I celebrate Purim in my community every year, and am currently a co-sponsor of an anti-BDS resolution.

In 2010, I was privileged to join the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of New York’s mission to Israel. I spent an emotional day at Yad Vashem where I was moved to learn more about the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors. I am proud that Haiti, my parents’ country, opened its doors to survivors. And I am grateful that Israel was the first country to have a full ground operation in Haiti during the 2012 earthquake.

These experiences reinforced my commitment to promote cooperation and tolerance. For my efforts to build bridges between communities of color and the Jewish community, I was awarded the Haiti Jewish Refugee Legacy Project’s Tikkun Olam award.

Advertisement

1
2
SHARE
Previous articleRedeeming Relevance: Parshat Shelach
Next article‘No Intention’ to Dismiss Efrat’s Rabbi Riskin, Says Israel Chief Rabbi Lau
Rodneyse Bichotte represents the 42nd Assembly District in the New York State Assembly and serves as the district’s state committee woman/district leader.