{"id":227544,"date":"2026-05-11T18:43:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T18:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/227544\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T18:43:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T18:43:19","slug":"kathy-hochuls-great-school-choice-promise-comes-with-fingers-crossed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/227544\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathy Hochul&#8217;s great school-choice promise comes with fingers crossed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s great that Gov. Kathy Hochul now means to opt New York into the federal <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/02\/16\/us-news\/ny-gop-urges-hochul-to-opt-in-to-scholarship-tax-break-despite-teachers-union-pushback\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">school-choice<\/a> scholarship program \u2014 a win for schoolchildren at no cost to the state \u2014 but why is she hedging from the start?<\/p>\n<p>The governor broke the news in a private meeting with leaders of an Orthodox Jewish group eager for their kids to benefit, showing she realizes it can be a vote-winner.<\/p>\n<p>But her flacks then publicly hedged by saying she\u2019d have to check for \u201cpoison pills that could harm New York\u2019s education system\u201d before making it official.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n<p>Bull: She knows the teachers unions hate this program, because it gives families help in escaping union-dominated public schools; that\u2019s why only one Democratic governor, Colorado\u2019s Jared Polis, has opted in so far.<\/p>\n<p>Again, opting in means \u201cfree money\u201d for New Yorkers, period.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"inline-module__cta\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Starting next year, taxpayers nationwide can  redirect up to $1,700 of their federal income taxes to nonprofit scholarship organizations that provide money for nonpublic school tuition, tutoring and other educational expenses.<\/p>\n<p>Governors only have the power to block families in their states from getting the help.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re overjoyed that Hochul is opening the door to maybe bucking the teachers unions, but her record of <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/12\/17\/opinion\/dont-believe-kathy-hochuls-all-too-cute-claims-to-have-u-turned-on-climate-clampdown\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reversing course <\/a>at the expense of the little guy after she\u2019s won re-election has us worried. <\/p>\n<p>Drop the \u201cpoison pill\u201d double-talk, gov, and side firmly with New York\u2019s schoolchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s great that Gov. Kathy Hochul now means to opt New York into the federal school-choice scholarship program&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153,304,67,426,9,11,10,49,51,50,299,33635,5272,6854,13038],"class_list":["post-227544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-donald-trump","tag-editorial","tag-education","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-opinion","tag-scholarships","tag-school-choice","tag-tax-credits","tag-teachers-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}