Felder’s Foul Power-Play

Simcha Felder’s state-budget-deadline power play was wrong on all counts. Elected as a Democrat who warned he might caucus with the Republicans, Felder is now the crucial vote that makes the GOP the state Senate majority. And with the chamber’s Independent Democrats joining with mainstream Dems in many budget votes, he moved to charge a special price for not gumming up the works.

Felder demanded a bill to exempt private yeshivas from state requirements to provide adequate education in basic areas such as English, math, science and history.

That’s right: He thinks it’s just fine to leave Jewish kids unprepared for life in the modern world, and he was willing to hold the whole Legislature hostage to that end.

To be fair, he wasn’t the only problem: Other unresolved issues included new grants of design-build authority as well as moves toward hiking lawmakers’ pay.

But that doesn’t make his move any less odious.

The yeshiva issue has dragged on for years in the city. Whistleblowers insist several of the schools fail utterly at providing a basic secular education.

The yeshivas insist that’s not so; it’s just hard for them to prove because their kids don’t take the state exams that would resolve the issue.

So why not just test the kids — if not with the same exams, then with others that can clearly show competence?

The schools’ political power is notable: It’s also plainly behind the long stall by Mayor de Blasio’s Department of Education, which has supposedly been investigating the yeshivas for 2 ¹/2 years now. (It was supposed to be done last spring.)

Up in Albany, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) checked Felder by blaming the whole Good Friday logjam on him; the senator went home having gotten only an empty face-saving measure on the yeshivas.

If the speaker really cares about the kids, though, he’ll follow up by pushing the state Education Department and his own Education Committee to do something about de Blasio’s delays.