Cite as: 512 U. S. 687 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
with religious practice or doctrine, as the reason for seeking separate treatment. Id., at 189, 527 N. E. 2d, at 775.
By 1989, only one child from Kiryas Joel was attending Monroe-Woodbury's public schools; the village's other handicapped children received privately funded special services or went without. It was then that the New York Legislature passed the statute at issue in this litigation, which provided that the village of Kiryas Joel "is constituted a separate school district, . . . and shall have and enjoy all the powers and duties of a union free school district . . . ." 1989 N. Y. Laws, ch. 748.1 The statute thus empowered a locally elected board of education to take such action as opening schools and closing them, hiring teachers, prescribing textbooks, establishing disciplinary rules, and raising property taxes to fund operations. N. Y. Educ. Law § 1709 (McKinney 1988). In signing the bill into law, Governor Cuomo recognized that the residents of the new school district were "all members of the same religious sect," but said that the bill was "a good faith effort to solve th[e] unique problem" associated with providing special education services to handicapped children in the village. Memorandum filed with Assembly Bill Number 8747 (July 24, 1989), App. 40-41.
Although it enjoys plenary legal authority over the elementary and secondary education of all school-aged children
1 The statute provides in full: "Section 1. The territory of the village of Kiryas Joel in the town of Monroe, Orange county, on the date when this act shall take effect, shall be and hereby is constituted a separate school district, and shall be known as the Kiryas Joel village school district and shall have and enjoy all the powers and duties of a union free school district under the provisions of the education law.
"§ 2. Such district shall be under the control of a board of education, which shall be composed of from five to nine members elected by the qualified voters of the village of Kiryas Joel, said members to serve for terms not exceeding five years.
"§ 3. This act shall take effect on the first day of July next succeeding the date on which it shall have become a law."
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