Of the 137 sub awards, 62 – 45% – went to Orthodox Jewish schools and organizations.
Recovery.gov has a searchable database of Stimulus grants issued. The new York Education Department was awarded a $5,990,474 grant, of which just under 50%, $2,274,027, has actually been received and distributed to 137 sub-awardees.
The money is meant to be used for schools participating in the National School Lunch Program. Here's the wording from the Recovery.gov website:
The New York State Education Department received funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) to assist in the purchase of equipment for School Food Authorities (SFAs) participating in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) through a competitive grant process. Priority was given to SFAs for equipment in schools in which at least 50 percent of the students were eligible for free or reduced-priced meals. Other focused areas of the grant include: improving the quality of school foodservice meals to meet dietary guidelines; improving the safety of food served in the school meal programs; improving the overall energy efficiency of the school foodservice operations; and supporting the expansion of participation in the school meal program. To date the NYS Education Department has: 1. Issued an ARRA grant solicitation to SFAs participating in the NSLP 2. Received and scored ARRA grant applications from SFAs competitively 3. Awarded ARRA grants to SFAs participating in the NSLP.
Yet, of those 137 sub awards, 62 – 45% – went to Jewish schools and organizations, all of whom appear to be haredi.
One of those haredi schools is Chabad's Beth Rivkah, in this case, Beth Rivkah's Head Start program.
What makes this specific grant interesting is what I was told about Beth Rivkah by Beth Rivkah students seven years ago.
Those students told me their school did not have a school lunch program. But one or two days per year, when the state inspectors were expected, the school's kitchen was opened and all students were required to stay for lunch.
The school's rabbis explained this by telling the students that the school needed their government lunch money for other things – like paying teachers and paying utility bills. The government, the rabbis said, only really care that you have food. Normally, you all go home and eat lunch, and none of you are nutritionally wanting or in need of food. We're just using the money the government gives to pay for other expenses, so the school can stay open. The government, the rabbis, claimed, doesn't really care as long as the money is used for school expenses of some kind.
This type of fraud is rumored to be common in New York State, especially in haredi areas.
So how is it that haredi schools make up 45% of program grantees?
Some of this might be explained by the centralization of Catholic schools, which would mean one grant could aid several Catholic schools, while haredi schools tend to be stand alone operations.
Even so, it seems haredi schools received a disproportionate amount of federal Stimulus money doled out by New York State.
That reflects, I believe, both the power of bloc voting and the corruption that appears to rule in Albany.
[Hat Tip: Mobius.]
UPDATE 4-13-10 9:45 pm – The New York Post researched this and found that haredi schools got $1 million in stimulus funds, while NYC schools got $2 million. The catch? NYC school have 10 times more students than haredi schools.