The War That Wasn't: Religious Conflict and Compromise in the Common Schools of New York State, 1865-1900

9. Public Funds for Religious Schools

Chapter 9 ____________________________ Public Funds for Religious Schools INTRODUCTION The strongest post-bellum challenge to the common school system came in cities, and came over the issue of public funding for church schools. Since Catholic and Protestant confrontations over the Free School Society’s control of public funds in New York City in the 1840s, most Catholic Church leaders demanded public funding for separate, denominational schools. (They still do.) In the decades following the Civil War, Democratic Party strength and localism in city school systems across New York State made such funding possible. Driven by overcrowding, and facilitated by a fluid understanding of “public” education, cities large and small began channeling public resources into church-run schools after the Civil War. Funding for city common schools came from two sources: state funds, under the auspices of the legislature, and local tax, under the control of city government. Proponents of public aid to religious schools used both with varying degrees of success. From large metropolises such as New York and Buffalo to small cities such as Elmira, Utica, and Ogdensburg, state residents and lawmakers considered, and often created, publicly funded church schools.1 The success or failure of these ventures depended on their relationship to the needs of their city school systems and their “fit” with the principle of democratic control of schools. In New York City, proponents of state aid— led by Boss Tweed—exploited Tweed’s influence in the state legislature to sneak such funding into state appropriations bills. In a more above-board mode, several cities and incorporated villages created such plans in the late 189 1860s and 1870s in the absence of coherent state policy toward city governance in general and toward religious issues in particular. Other cities voted on such plans but failed to adopt them. Even though they failed more often than they succeeded, however, plans providing public funds to church schools marked an important phase in the development of urban public schooling in religiously pluralistic cities. In the late 1880s, the tide turned. Beginning with a landmark decision in 1886, state government played an increasingly active role in regulating local agreements over public funding for church-related schools. This activism reflected more general trends in state educational policy and culminated in a constitutional amendment in 1894 banning state funding of “sectarian schools.” It also led to a string of appeals decisions that effectively ended local arrangements in most, if not all, cities. By the turn of the century , legal distinctions between “public” and “private” education sharpened on the stone of religion and set firm patterns of control and funding that would endure into the twenty-first century. “THE SCHOOL STEAL”: FUNDING FOR PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS IN NEW YORK CITY, 1869–1871 Church-state cooperation was not new to New York State education. Since the inception of state support in the late eighteenth century, the State Board of Regents had provided funds for private academies of all denominations to provide elite education—and teacher training—for a small percentage of children. The Regents also provided funds to colleges and universities, many of which were denominationally affiliated. The Department of Public Instruction, which “oversaw” common schools, also provided funding for church-run charities targeting specific “problem” populations: orphan asylums, which offered instruction as well as room and board, and Indian schools.2 As long as they remained outside of the common school system—and thus could not threaten the premise of civil control—measures to assist orphanages earned the support of all but the most ardent protagonists in the church-state drama (and taxpayer protectionists). The state traditionally supported denominational academies as well, but when these began to compete with the public high school movement, cries of “sectarianism” grew apace, resulting in an 1873 law that forbade (albeit loosely) state aid to “any religious or denominational academy of this state.”3 Church-run orphanages also weathered much criticism in the 1860s and 1870s for violating the separation of church and state and even lost all state funding in 1872 as part of a major realignment of state funding for private charity. Nevertheless, by 1875, the legislature had returned, and even expanded, its support of educa190 Religion and Urban Schools tional charity institutions, regardless of their religious affiliation. Urban social reformers hailed the return of support, arguing that private orphanages provided a public good that could not be accomplished by existing public institutions.4 The same...