ALBANY – With Governor Pataki and the state Legislature poised to decide on key issues concerning school choice, the U.S. secretary of education is stepping into the fray with a visit to a Christian school in Queens.

In an event with the governor and hosted by a major black religious leader in Jamaica, Queens, Margaret Spellings today is expected to address an audience of hundreds on the subjects of charter schools and the school choice provisions in President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and in his 2007 budget proposal.

Her visit to Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church comes at a time when the debate over school choice in the state is at a high pitch. Mr. Pataki, months before he leaves office, is trying to get lawmakers to support a lifting of the cap on the number of charter schools and an education tax credit of up to $500 that would allow parents to use a portion of their tax liability on private school tuition or tutoring.

Lawmakers rejected both proposals in the legislative budget completed last week, and Mr. Pataki is threatening to veto their changes. School choice has been among the dominant issues during budget negotiations this year, with advocacy groups on both sides spending millions of dollars on aggressive lobbying efforts and statewide ad campaigns.

Some of the state’s largest interest groups and constituencies have a stake in the battle.

The teachers unions, both the United Federation of Teachers and New York State United Teachers, view the governor’s twin school choice plans as attacks on a public school system that badly needs more state financial backing. The unions say the state can’t afford to spend more money on charter schools, which are independent of local school districts and whose teachers frequently are not unionized, and claim that the experimental schools offer an inferior education.

Mr. Pataki in his executive budget called for increasing the cap on the number of charter schools to 250 from 100 and granting New York City’s schools chancellor, Joel Klein, an unlimited number of charters approved by the Board of Regents and 50 charter schools that do not require such approval. The governor also proposed giving not-for-profit agencies the power to grant charters and allowing charter schools to receive building aid.

Opponents say the governor’s education tax credit plan, which is targeted at low-income parents living in struggling school districts, amounts to a tuition voucher that would make school districts compete for dollars against private schools. Under pressure from the unions, the Legislature approved a child tax credit that does not have to be used for educational expenses.

Ethnic and religious groups supporting the governor’s education tax credit measure, including Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and segments of Hispanic and black communities in New York City, are arguing that the state ought to support parents whose children are attending private schools and who are already paying taxes to support public schools. School choice advocates point out that the state spends an average of about $13,000 a student, more than $4,500 above the national average.

A spokesman for the Department of Education said Ms. Spellings’s visit to New York City today was not timed to have an impact on budget negotiations and was planned far in advance.

The hope among school choice advocates is that Ms. Spellings’s appearance will help tip the balance in the debate. Nathan Diament, director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, a group that is participating in the Queens event, said the education secretary’s talk “could short circuit some of the partisanship that’s infected the debate in New York” and “get policymakers focused on policies and results rather than on more narrow political interests.”

Ms. Spellings, who before becoming secretary in January 2005 served as Mr. Bush’s chief domestic policy adviser, is an advocate of charter schools. A spokesman for the education department said he did not know her position on education tax credits.

The secretary of education will be touring a parochial school that came under federal scrutiny in the 1990s.The Justice Department in 1991 sued the Reverend Floyd Flake for allegedly using federal funds to build a portion of the Allen Christian School, which is part of Rev. Flake’s Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church. In a settlement three years later, Rev. Flake agreed to pay back the government more than $500,000 but acknowledged no wrongdoing.

Rev. Flake, who served as a U.S. congressman, said Ms. Spellings has chosen to visit the Allen Christian School, which enrolls nearly 800 pre-K- through eighth-grade students, because it’s “considered a model in terms of its ability to produce young people who have the capacity to pass exams.”