Teacher salaries — for limudei kodesh and secular studies, for all ages and grades preschool through 12th, for rebbeim, male teachers, and female morahs — have always been notoriously low. Salary depends on where you work, how experienced you are, and whether you teach limudei kodesh or secular studies (the average frum secular studies teacher is paid the least). Today, after a recent wave of raises in the industry, a rebbi in Lakewood can bring home $50,000 to $75,000 with no added benefits, while an experienced rebbi in New York can bring home $85,000 to more than $100,000 plus generous benefits. Out of town rebbeim make in the $70,000 to $80,000 range plus benefits that may include housing, health, and tuition benefits.

Lakewood morahs have smaller paychecks, with salaries ranging from the high $20,000s to the mid-$30,000s, similar to New York. Florida pays an average $60,000 plus benefits (they aim to raise that to $65,000), and in Chicago, Joan Dachs Bais Yaakov-Yeshiva Tiferes Tzvi pays morahs $37,000 plus health and housing, as well as a tuition benefit of $800 tuition per student.

Other perks often associated with these jobs — shorter in-school hours, the flexibility to be on their children’s schedules, Yamim Tovim and summers off, no need for an advanced degree, claiming parsonage on taxes, klei kodesh discounts in other businesses, and of course, tuition and associated breaks — help supplement the low chinuch salary, but the jobs demand an incredible amount of dedication. The hours in the classroom are intense, and there is after-hours preparation and follow-up long after the bell rings.

Around six years ago, schools noticed they were struggling with rebbi and teacher positions: it took longer to fill them, and many of the new recruits had never stepped foot in a classroom before. Post-seminary girls, knowing they wanted to support husbands in kollel and that shidduchim were easier for girls earning a higher paycheck, sought jobs with bigger salaries. Morahs with decades of teaching experience under their belts were leaving the classrooms, their low salaries and the increased cost of living irreconcilable.

Things came to a head when local and national efforts with the admirable goal of raising shockingly low salaries forced many to raise them sooner rather than later, often without funding for those new expenses.

One executive director remembers his community’s major push to raise the salaries of limudei kodesh morahs in Bais Yaakovs. It had a domino effect; the following day, secular studies morahs started calling for matching raises, soon followed by kriah teachers, special ed teachers, and the secretarial staff. Then female teachers in yeshivos started campaigning for better salaries, at which point the rebbeim started demanding raises as well.

Rabbi Yitzchok Gottdiener, executive director of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn, New York, tells of a fund promised to him as an incentive to raise his rebbeim’s salaries by $10,000 each, which would add an additional $500,000 to the annual budget. The yeshivah couldn’t afford to increase payroll so drastically in one fell swoop, but they knew their rebbeim needed to be paid more. The fund quickly ran out of money, unfortunately, so Rabbi Gottdiener and Rosh Yeshivah Rabbi Yisroel Reisman worked tirelessly to raise the funds themselves, and a substantial salary increase was put into place twice over the following years.

Administrators agree that chinuch salaries should be higher, but they bemoan sweeping initiatives as shortsighted, because the cost is significantly higher than original calculations. As one principal succinctly puts it, initiatives that are well-meaning but not well thought-out can “throw a grenade” in the budget of a school that is barely managing as is.

The COO of a girl’s elementary school with annual operating budget of close to $7 million says that when someone launched a community initiative to give morahs a $14,000-raise over a four-year period, it meant that, compounded over a four-year period, that incremental $14,000-raise cost him $49,500 per employee. With 100 eligible employees, that means the school is paying $4.9 million in additional salary costs.

In a school with 700 children, he says, were this cost to be passed to the parents, the same four-year period would translate to a tuition increase of an additional $7,000 per student.

“This burden isn’t realistic for our parent body to more than minimally absorb,” he says. “Our budget’s been blown out of the water.”

Rabbi Yanky Robinson, founder and executive director of Lakewood’s Nachlas Bais Yaakov elementary school, describes the balancing act school owners navigate: trying to keep tuition rates from rising even more while paying their mechanchim respectably. It’s literally impossible to do both — and the morahs are the ones who bear the brunt of this untenable situation.

“At the end of the day, if the morahs refuse to work for the $30- or $40,000 they make today — if they even demand to be paid what rebbeim make — tuition would skyrocket to even more unaffordable levels,” he says.

REVENUE SOURCES OF THE PAST NO LONGER EXIST

Until this year, Chicago schools, with their generous individual and corporate scholarship programs, were the envy of East Coast mosdos. These were funded by parents and businesses who received Illinois tax credits for donating, and allowed schools to stay in the black even as a large percentage of low-income parents paid little to no tuition. (The Agudah is attempting to replicate this program in New Jersey.) But after six years of trying, the public-school teacher’s union finally shut the program down.

The effects are disastrous, says Rabbi Menachem Levine, CEO of Joan Dachs Bais Yaakov-Yeshiva Tiferes Tzvi in Chicago, a joint entity with a Bais Yaakov branch in one campus and a yeshivah branch in another, educating a combined total of 1,600 students.

“We’re a large school, so we lost ‘only’ a quarter of our revenue overnight — about $4.5 million dollars,” he says. “The smaller schools lost a higher percentage.”

In an attempt to stanch the bleeding, JDBY-YTT was forced to take several steps, decreasing staff benefits like on-site subsidized childcare, cutting several extracurricular programs, and of course, raising tuition across the board. Minimum tuition rose from $3,500 to $4,500 per child.

“All families pay at least that amount, no exceptions,” says Rabbi Levine. “If a family really can’t, the school tries to help set them up with rabbanim, chesed organizations, donors, and easier payment plans.”

There is a tuition cap of four students between the two branches for minimum tuition-paying families. This amounts to $18,000, but for families with children in more than one elementary school, yeshivah, or high school, bills will be higher; some low-income parents have gone from paying no tuition to facing bills of more than $40,000! (The school recognizes the real need of families struggling to cover basic necessities, let alone minimum tuition, Rabbi Levine says. In conjunction with the Chicago-based Walder Foundation, local frum balabatim initiated a $3.6 million fund for the upcoming year to help Chicago’s minimum tuition families get $2,250 off tuition.)

The spending cuts and tuition hikes still don’t make up JDBY-YTT’s shortfall, and the school now needs to convince donors to be as generous as they’ve been in the past even without the tax benefits — and during an economic downturn.

“We’re the largest employer of frum people in the Chicago community by far, so anything that endangers our ability to make payroll affects everyone,” Rabbi Levine says. In a smaller out of town community, the stakes are even higher: If the school fails, the community fails.

One of the primary ways a school can increase revenue is by fundraising, says Mr. Yisroel Kilstein, manager in the not-for-profit services division at accounting firm Roth & Co. in New Jersey, who helps his clients with reporting obligations, compliance issues, initial structuring, and general consultation. (Out-of-town schools may rely on government grants as well, but those are negligible in New York and New Jersey.)

Mr. Kilstein notes that for a short time after the initial Covid lockdown period, stimulus money flowed (see Covid programs sidebar) and real estate temporarily boomed, so schools could rely on increased grants and fundraising from certain industries that did well during the pandemic. But as interest rates and inflation started to rise, donor activity slowed, especially as the real estate and healthcare industries — both of which donated heavily to schools — suffered an economic downturn.

There has also been a generational shift in attitude. One administrator notes that after the war, survivors and their peers donated to any Jewish organization, because they were focused on rebuilding Klal Yisrael — especially when there was a personal connection.

“They’ve passed on,” he laments, “We’re losing our builders, and today’s younger generation, while generous to the causes that appeal to them personally, is less interested in the quieter foundational work of maintaining our systems.”

SYSTEM MAINTENANCE IS BORING (ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S ELEMENTARY AND/OR GIRLS SCHOOLS)

“When I had to raise the capital for the rebbeim’s salary increase and told donors I was establishing a fund that would provide me with $500,000 a year for the next five years, it was relatively easy to accomplish. But when I tell donors, ‘I’m struggling with payroll and need you to come forward and donate $100,000 a year for the next few years,’ people are less enthusiastic,” Rabbi Gottdiener says, explaining the appeal of trending causes (hint: payroll is not one of them). This is not unique to schools; day-to-day needs are never as interesting, and no one gets excited about operating costs.

Rabbi Kaplan differentiates between yeshivos and organizations like Chai Lifeline and Hatzalah, two examples of chesed organizations with broad communal reach due to the indispensable nature of their work, but a yeshivah — one of so many — really needs to distinguish itself.

“Those schools need to work at their marketing to show why they’re unique and deserve a donor’s check more than any other school,” he says. “And when all else fails, they’re going to need to refocus on their parent and grandparent body.”

That’s one of the reasons why fundraising can be harder for elementary schools, where the only donor base is the parent body.

“Our students graduate at 13 or 14, so we don’t have an alumni network, and people don’t donate to an elementary school they have no connection to,” a New York administrator says.

An administrator in Lakewood puts it more bluntly: “Men are loyal to their mesivta and beis medrash, but when was the last time a man donated to his elementary school? It’s hard to have an alumni relationship with a thirteen-year-old.”

Asking grandparents for significant donations is a divisive topic, and Rabbi Robinson does not appreciate attempts to pressure grandparents to step in if the parents are unable to pay tuition.

“Some of them still have obligations to children in school or kollel families to support. Many of them have been blessed with dozens of grandkids — they can’t afford to support all of those schools,” he says.

Other executive directors mention students who attend school at a discount — even when they have wealthy grandparents. In communities where parents are significantly better off than their married children, this is not an outlier — and there are multiple poskim who hold that grandparents also have a chiyuv of chinuch.

“If you’re handing out tzedakah, why are you making me go around schnorring for your grandkids?” one of them says. “You’d be surprised how often this happens.”

Rabbi Robinson used to fundraise in communities around the country, in addition to his local efforts, because in Lakewood, he is one of 150 schools and girls chinuch causes don’t yield as much as boys. But as the economy has soured, he has been finding it increasingly challenging to fundraise outside his parent body. Everyone has their own kids’ schools to support; why would they support a random elementary school? And a random girls’ school? Forget it.

Myth-Busting — Vouchers

Myth:  All vouchers are the same.

Reality Not at all! Twenty-six states have some sort of state-funded tuition assistance program. One is a tuition voucher, a state-distributed check funded by the state’s education budget that covers a portion of a student’s tuition bill (it is usually made out the school). At least 11 states in America have some sort of voucher program, explains New Jersey Assemblyman Avi Schnall, who is working on a tuition scholarship program for New Jersey (see Lakewood tuition bill sidebar).

Florida is one of the few states with universal vouchers (not income-based, meaning any state resident, regardless of financial status, qualifies for a voucher check if they want it), whereas other states use family income and size to determine who qualifies. In these cases, the total amount of voucher funds distributed is decided when the state budget is finalized. it is not based on tuition or how many families qualify; the more applicants there are, the smaller the voucher payout is (similar to a class action lawsuit).

The state-funded scholarship program, which is more common, allows individuals and corporations to take a percentage of their tax bill and donate it to the school in exchange for a tax credit. Scholarship funds are distributed on a first-come-first-serve, lottery, or family size/income basis, and not every parent who wants a scholarship will get one.

Myth:  When my state gets our scholarship program running, I’ll be able to write off my tuition bill because it’s tax-deductible.

Reality That’s not how it works, clarifies Rabbi Menachem Levine, CEO of Chicago’s Joan Dachs Bais Yaakov-Yeshivas Tiferes Tzvi. The donor still has to pay his taxes, but he gets to decide where his tax money goes instead of just passing it onto the state. Parents can’t use taxable funds to pay for their child, but they can donate to the general scholarship fund and apply for a scholarship afterward, if they qualify.

Myth: Qualifying for a voucher means I’ll never pay tuition again.

RealityTemper your expectations — voucher programs never cover the full cost of education. The state uses a formula to decide how much of the tuition to cover, which can be a significant amount. For example, a parent sending their third-grader to Florida’s Yeshiva Toras Chaim Toras Emes will have a tuition bill of $19,145 (after registration or fees, but before the voucher kicks in). The state voucher check to the school will be made out for $8,150, and the parent’s bill will be $10,995.

Memo from the Back Office

Set It All Aside

I worked in chinuch before I opened my school, and unless you’ve done it yourself, you cannot understand how hard it is to be a successful teacher. You’re thrown in front of a room of 25-plus neshamos, each with his own strengths, weaknesses, and history. You need to figure them all out while also crafting a single lesson that reaches everyone at their own level.

Parents: Forget the school owners, the money, the politics, and think about your child’s rebbi or morah. Think about the time and kochos they invest in your child. They deserve to be paid on time, and that can happen only if their employer is financially stable — and you need to do your part to help the school function.

I know the efforts my staff make every single day, in and out of the classroom; being unable to pay them for their work is the worst feeling in the world. It’s one thing to be unable to make rent, which unfortunately has happened before. But when I can’t pay a rebbi or a morah, it hurts to walk into school.

Rabbi Michoel Bitton, founder and rosh yeshivah at Yeshiva Ohr Hachinuch in Lakewood, New Jersey

Myth-busting — The Lakewood Tuition Bill

New Jersey Assemblyman Avi Schnall was swept into office by voters desperate for tuition relief. He cosponsored a scholarship bill called the New Jersey Student Support Act, but it was pulled before being put up for a vote.

Myth: The tuition bill is dead; Lakewood parents will never get a break.

Reality: Hope springs eternal.

The short story: “We knew there was a real possibility this wouldn’t happen on first attempt,” Mr. Schnall says. In fact, most ambitious legislative goals take multiple sessions to make it through. Mr. Schnall adds that they pulled the bill for tactical reasons, because the issue ballooned as public-school unions argued against the very existence of private schools.

The long story: School funding takes years to materialize, especially in a blue state like New Jersey, home to one of the most powerful teachers’ unions in the country. The New Jersey Student Support Act was crafted to counter expected criticism from the public schools, but once the unions read it, their arguments were no longer about private schools stealing public schools’ resources, but about not wanting parents to have an alternative to public schools.

Mr. Schnall is confident that the bill will pass eventually, because so many Democrats were willing to support it publicly despite fierce union opposition.

“This wasn’t a Republican-only bill. We had 14 Democratic sponsors who liked the bill so much that they wanted their names attached to it,” he says, a revolutionary number because Democrats aren’t usually willing to risk political capital on conservative causes.

However, blowback was fierce, and the historic number of supporters wasn’t enough to override the detractors — yet.

“We learned that it doesn’t matter what the bill says; ultimately, we’re fighting an ideology. We know the numbers we need now. We pulled the bill to take the heat off our supporters as we work to gain enough votes behind the scenes to push it through,” he says.

Myth: Even if the bill passes, I won’t get tuition relief because I’m in the middle class and never benefit from these programs.

Reality Hope springs eternal yet again.

Middle-class families struggle because communal and government support is directed exclusively at lower income families, so they’re “too rich” for the programs but not wealthy enough to actually make ends meet in a Jewish lifestyle. Mr. Schnall’s bill aims to approve a high-income threshold so it can include as many of these families as possible; the original income group won’t be the only income group ever to qualify.

“These types of bills tend to get more generous and inclusive as time goes on,” he says, pointing at Florida’s universal vouchers program, which started as a way to help families with children with special needs.

Covid Programs

One of the first questions a parent wonders when they see their new bill is, Why can’t schools just use all that Covid money? While Covid grants ended as tuition rose steeply, it was not a cause and effect, says Mr. Yisroel Kilstein of Roth & Co., and schools availed themselves of two relief programs, which had limited methods for use.

The PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loan: In an attempt to prevent mass layoffs, this forgivable government loan was created to help businesses keep employees on payroll. Schools were required to use the loan to keep paying staff’s salaries, but were allowed to use up to 40 percent of the funds for their mortgage and utilities payments, which were billed regardless of whether school was in session during lockdown. Most schools chose to use the full amount to cover payroll for as long as they could.

The SBA (Small Business Administration) Loan was created solely for operating costs (utilities, rent, mortgage, insurance). It had to be repaid, and it was illegal to use it for construction of a new school building or any renovation projects.

When school was not in session during lockdown, a significant percentage of parents halted tuition payments. With dinners and most other fundraising options canceled, schools had no means to bring in enough money to cover payroll and bills, and these two sources of income are the reason that most schools didn’t permanently shutter.

Memo from the Back Office

FUND YOUR OWN BUSINESS

Modern-day yeshivos occupy a strange space; they are both and neither a business nor charity. It’s an identity crisis people have a hard time reconciling. Rabbi Yanky Robinson, executive director of Nachlas Bais Yaakov in Lakewood, New Jersey, relates the time a prospective donor said, “I don’t donate to schools because they’re a business,” going as far as to suggest that if Rabbi Robinson ran the school properly, he wouldn’t be out every night fundraising to make payroll.

This wasn’t the first time he received such audacious comments, prompting him to consider the preposterousness of running Nachlas like a business.

“If I ran my school like an upscale supermarket, the price I list is the price you pay, and there are no sales without manufacturer coupons. So if you don’t like my prices, feel free to shop at NPGS or Bingo — because grocery bills are not negotiable,” he muses. “Am I running a school, which means I’m a public service that needs donations to pay bills, or am I running a business, which means I shouldn’t be letting my customers pay a quarter of the cost and thinking they did their duty?”

Memo from the back office

Girl Power

We need to fund our daughters’ chinuch because women are the backbone of Klal Yisrael — who we are, and who we will be. It’s the mother who works hard all day to support her family and then turns around to raise her children and keep her home strong despite her exhaustion, who cries for her children’s futures, who takes the rebbi’s PTA remarks to heart. The mother is the one raising and influencing doros.

The principal of a girls school in Lakewood

Part 2: WHAT ARE THE SCHOOLS DOING ABOUT IT?

RAISING TUITION (OR NOT, BUT THEY WANT TO)

Which brings us to the final means of raising revenue: tuition.

Some historical context: After the Holocaust, the methods frum communities chose to financially support their schools on these shores diverged. The chassidim decided to keep communally funding them, as they had in Europe, while the yeshivah world, unsure how chinuch in America would play out, agreed it was an individual’s responsibility. The chassidim chose wisely, one administrator points out, because schools are included in the kehillah fundraisers and tuition is generally lower, ranging from under $1,000 to a few thousand dollars. (However, due to a lack of funds two chassidish schools in Lakewood didn’t open on time this year.)

Regardless, it’s hard to envision successful communally funded litvish schools, especially in larger places like Lakewood and New York, because the community’s strains and sects are too scattered with no one rav at the helm.

Some more history: During the Lakewood Cheder’s inception more than 50 years ago, its hanhalah realized that their entire clientele consisted of klei kodesh and kollel families who were unable to afford a tuition that would cover the school’s operating costs. They decided to do something innovative with long-lasting consequences: Charge families a token tuition, a fraction of what was needed but something they could pay, and fundraise the rest. This was a sharp departure from how tuition had been calculated: take your school’s budget and divide it by the number of enrolled students.

As the community grew and more schools opened to accommodate mass migration to Lakewood as well as its exploding birthrate, they followed the Cheder’s pricing method — even though it was becoming obvious that fundraising wasn’t enough to keep schools financially solvent. Competition for the same donor base increased, yields decreased proportionately, and schools started taking on debt. The mentality that a yeshivah runs on a deficit became the norm.

About four years ago, tuition was raised for all, including kollel families — but even then, full tuition didn’t cover half the cost to educate a child.

“There were occasional half-baked attempts by schools to start charging parents what it actually cost to educate their children, but they were always shouted down by the furious parent body,” one Lakewood administrator says.

Debts became unmanageable, so much so that executive directors started grappling with dilemmas like, If I know we can’t afford to cover payroll, may I keep this from my staff before the year starts because otherwise, I know they’ll quit? and Can I pay our single girl staff last because she doesn’t have a family to support?

Some administrators, like Rabbi Bitton, took on personal loans to keep their institutions afloat.

“I always say HaKadosh Baruch Hu made me completely ignorant of the realities of owning a school when the idea first occurred to me, because I had no idea what I was in for,” he says with a short laugh. “Running my school gives me a chiyus and pride, but being on the hook for so much debt is very scary.”

Several years ago, a few yeshivos switched to a new method.

“The impetus actually came from our balebatim,” remembers the administrator of a large Lakewood yeshivah. “I was talking to a father in our school about fundraising, and he realized that even though he was paying the $7,000 ‘full tuition,’ it really cost us $9,000 to educate his son — and he was shocked. ‘You mean you’re collecting tzedakah for my son?!’”

“I admitted that essentially yes, we were, because we needed to cover the $2,000-gap his tuition didn’t cover. He said, ‘That doesn’t make sense! I don’t need anyone to collect tzedakah for my family, I can afford my chiyuv to educate my children!’ He was surprisingly upset.”

Turns out, this father wasn’t the only one; many parents take pride in supporting their children’s chinuch.

“It never occurred to me to charge cost, since no one in the city did it,” the administrator recalls. “That ended up being the turning point — we switched our model so full tuition covers the cost of education.”

While other schools are slowly starting to abandon the Lakewood tuition model, not all parents are as eager and able, and not every school wants to battle it out with their parent body. This is a constant source of debate among boards and administrators.

“We would love to charge cost — the extra revenue would be a gamechanger — but my parent body is more yeshivish, not as wealthy,” shares another principal. “We’re not ready for that fight.”

Although he’s not the only one to start offering parents the opportunity to pay the cost of education with full tuition, Rabbi Robinson has (for better or worse) become the face of that movement. Despite not being independently wealthy, Rabbi Robinson, who was a yungerman in Beth Medrash Govoha working on the side to make ends meet, was inspired to open Nachlas nine years ago after watching a friend’s daughter struggle to enroll in school due to lack of space. His goal was always to keep tuition as low as possible — and for six years, he succeeded.

Rabbi Robinson breaks down the numbers from 2021: It cost more than $8,000 to educate each girl, and “full” tuition was $5,600. By 2022, the cost to educate rose to $9,000, and they raised full tuition to $7,500. In 2023, the cost to educate rose again, to $10,000, but full tuition remained at $7,500. A grant the school was using to help with expenses expired simultaneously. So despite 65 percent of Nachlas parents paying full — unheard of for a Lakewood Bais Yaakov — Rabbi Robinson was still looking at a $2,500 shortfall per student. With just under 600 students, that meant a budget gap of $1.7 million dollars — even as salaries and costs kept rising. His exhaustive fundraising just wasn’t enough, and he could take on no more personal debt than what he already had.

In advance of announcing a tuition hike, the Nachlas tuition committee, comprised of three accountants, crafted a worksheet of appropriate tuition based on family income, size, and other considerations.

After Pesach 2024, Rabbi Robinson invited his parent body to a conference call where he shared the numbers with everyone in attendance.

“This year’s budget of $6.5 million dollars means the cost to educate each child is $11,000,” he said, explaining that full tuition would increase $3,500 per student and he would charge that only of parents who volunteer — not are forced, but volunteer — to pay full tuition. (By the start of this schoolyear, a grand total of five percent of his parent body signed up; more would join once school was in session.)

It was a two-hour conference call, and the 450 parents who dialed in were all muted but able to text Rabbi Robinson questions in real time. He reads me some of the texts; they range from obnoxious (I’m not your pocketbook) to intrusive (How much money do you bring home in profit, and If you’re so transparent, show me your income taxes, Did you go on vacation last year? What type of car do you drive?) to clueless (If Morahs get more money, they should work harder like the rest of us. They have too many days off and if we pay more, can we have school on Sunday?). Some questions were intelligent (Can you add more kids to the classes to make tuition cheaper? — the school is considering adding one student per class, bringing in another $150,000) and supportive (I understand why you’re raising; we hope you have hatzlachah. I know you’re doing it for our kids).

Suffice it to say, the meeting was not an overwhelming success — and that was before parents posted their frustration online and the blogs started to weigh in. (Let’s just say these are not shining examples of Klal Yisrael at its finest.)

And so, Rabbi Robinson became the face of the burgeoning cost of tuition, and he’s been the target of much anger ever since.

“Someone approached me in shul a few weeks ago and started loudly berating me in public,” he says. “He has no idea how much debt the school — and me personally — are in, he has no clue about all the alternatives we tried first, or how much we consulted daas Torah. I had no choice but to raise my tuition, it was either that or shut down.”

Rabbi Robinson is baffled by the vitriol, and very matter-of-fact about the attacks, saying, “I ask you: If there are parents who are able to pay what it really costs to educate their children, why aren’t we charging them that?”

He is well aware of the stress tuition places on all parents; dropping another several thousand dollars on an already strained budget is not easy to just take in stride.

“Just because I need to charge more tuition doesn’t mean parents’ finances miraculously improved — I’m not obligating or expecting parents to suddenly afford another $6,000 per child. We’re not monsters, and no one should feel bad requesting scholarships,” Rabbi Robinson says, explaining he plans on raising $1.3 million to cover the budget shortfall incurred by keeping scholarships as-is — and that his focus still remains on the end goal. “As mechanchim,” he says, “We need to make sure every girl has access to a Torah education.”

Parents who can pay only $4,000, or $6,000 per child are paying those lower rates — which is why Rabbi Robinson still has the debt he took out on the school’s behalf; payroll alone for this academic year is $4.4 million, or $440,000 a month.

Tuition still doesn’t cover payroll — and regardless of what a school charges for tuition, it seems, it won’t be enough, and collection will still be a struggle.

Memo from the Back Office

Help Wanted

If you want to enter the chinuch field and change the course of a child’s life, open a Bais Yaakov in Lakewood — this is where you’ll make an impact. There’s a desperate need for more girls elementary and high schools here. Many girls have no school to attend through no fault of their own — the issue is a lack of physical space, not lack of quality.

*Disclaimer: It’s not easy to run a girl’s school. This may dissuade you, but I believe in being honest, so here goes: Fundraising is harder, there’s not as much kavod as you think, and you’re definitely not getting a brachah under the chuppah. And if you’re successful and your school becomes a popular choice, you will collect an impressive number of enemies, because people take it incredibly personally if you don’t accept their daughter, especially if they’ve given you any sort of donation. I’ve had people show up at my doorstep to pressure me into accepting a student we don’t have a desk for.

Are you convinced yet? If I haven’t scared you off, please contact me — I’d love to help.

Rabbi Yanky Robinson, executive director of Nachlas Bais Yaakov in Lakewood, New Jersey

Memo from the Back Office

Working Together

Every tuition dollar is important, but there is always room for rachmanus, says Rabbi Joel Kaplan, executive director of Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway, New York. He shares the school’s two ironclad collection policies:

The school doesn’t charge widows and widowers. We don’t need our bills to be paid on the agmas nefesh of an alman or almunah. Many of them pay what they can afford, because they still want the zechus of sechar limud. We don’t refuse the money, but their tuition contract is zero as long as they have children in our school.

The school defers or reduces tuition bills if a parent loses a job. This is done on a month-to-month basis, and I also offer to help refer them to a job placement group here that we work with. Then I ask for their Hebrew name so I can say a kapitel Tehillim for their hatzlachah.

There is also room for graciousness. There’s a perception that people are getting tuition breaks but then driving new cars and going on expensive vacations. I’m sure that does happen, but if a family’s 12-year-old beater finally dies and they get a late model van that will last them another 12 years, are they being irresponsible? If a family goes on vacation but uses points or it was a gift from their parents, do they still not deserve a tuition break? As with every situation, you need to be dan l’chaf zechus until you know the facts.

Part 3: WHAT ARE PARENTS DOING ABOUT THAT?

PAYING MORE TUITION THAN THEY WANT TO AND IT’S STILL NOT ENOUGH, OR NOT PAYING ENOUGH TUITION — DEPENDS WHO YOU ASK

CHOOSING PRIORITIES: DO YOU PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS?

At the recent EDN (Executive Directors Network) Conference, the head of a very large school on the East Coast bemoaned, “Clothing stores are packed, high-end restaurants are packed. People live in multimillion-dollar homes, but they can’t afford tuition” — referring to middle class families who appeal their tuition statements and negotiate for breaks.

In such cases, schools generally assess income, family size, tuition paid elsewhere, and more to determine the tuition break; the final negotiated amount is referred to as assessed tuition. Rabbi Levine says that from what he sees, too many applicants for assessed tuition experience financial shortfall in a large part because of lifestyle choices.

“It seems that the only thing in Jewish life that’s expected to be negotiable is tuition,” Rabbi Levine muses. “No one is negotiating how much to pay for their rent or mortgage, their kids’ Yom Tov clothing, camps, or the price of a standard chasunah. Educating your child costs what it costs, and you need to come up with the money that you’ve been assessed for, just as you do for your other necessities.”

(If a parent still can’t, they can appeal the school’s assessment and the school will reevaluate, he clarifies.)

Schools can’t tell people to change their lifestyle, Rabbi Levine says, but the schools don’t need to pay for it either, and while acknowledging financial hardships, a school needs to discern who gets breaks — for the school’s sake: Is the family asking for a break because they don’t have money, or because they’re spending it elsewhere?

“Our role is not to change Klal Yisrael, that’s the job of gedolim,” he says. “We have a duty to educate our students and pay our staff on time.”

But the bitterness is evident.

“I can’t tell you how many people say, ‘If I only had, I would give more,’ ” says one Flatbush administrator. “But at what point in the list of priorities does tuition fall? What’s the cutoff point — after you went on all your vacations and built an addition to your house? Then is tuition the priority?”

As a klal, we value chinuch enough to want the highest quality, but not enough people are actually willing to pay for it — and a school can succeed only if the community believes in the value of a Torah education and is willing to fund it.

“You want a high-end wedding at the New York Hilton? You need to pay that price. You want a takanah chasunah? You’ll pay takanah pricing. Yet when it comes to education, everyone demands the Hilton while expecting to pay takanah prices,” says an administrator.

Chinuch is a value, it seems, just not one we’re willing to pay for.

NOT MY PROBLEM

Because schools can fundraise, parents may view tuition as, “not my problem,” says Rabbi Levine. They’d rather spend their money on things no one else will help them pay for — a car, summer camp, seminary — even though by asking for a tuition break, they are telling the school to collect tzedakah on their behalf. Parents who support older children in kollel and negotiate their younger children’s tuition are essentially asking the school to raise money for tuition for their younger children so they can support the older ones.

The latest and greatest is the gemara in Bava Basra that’s being quoted in school offices, on park benches, and everywhere in between. Parents are citing the gemara’s discussion about takanas Yehoshua ben Gamla, the edict of the Kohein Gadol Yehoshua ben Gamla, which instructs that schools should be created in all communities so all children can learn, even those who don’t have fathers who can fulfill their obligation to teach their sons Torah.

“Last week, a yungerman looked me in the eye, quoted takanas Yehoshua ben Gamla, and said, ‘I’m not mechuyav in my kids’ tuition — you’re mechuyav as a member of the klal,’ ” one administrator says, his frustration audible. “I hate to say it, but somewhere along the line we’ve created a monster. Parents have been trained to feel that their tuition is not their responsibility.”

But the takanah is not applicable to tuition today — in fact, this is an egregious misinterpretation, explains Rabbi Avrohom Gutman, a dayan with Lakewood’s Vaad Hadayanim and a halachic consultant primarily in Choshen Mishpat. He says that the Shulchan Aruch HaRav in hilchos Talmud Torah says that every father is obliged to teach or hire a rebbi to teach his son the entire Torah: Torah shebichsav and Torah shebe’al peh (i.e., both Tanach and Mishnayos and Gemara). Nowadays, because Torah shebe’al peh is written down, it is sufficient for a father to hire a rebbi to teach his son until he has the skills to learn Mishnayos and Gemara on his own. It’s also brought down that this takanah was for aniyim (poor people) who were unable to afford hiring a rebbi for their son. The takanah is that the kehillah is obliged to use the communal funds, which they collect for all communal obligations, to pay the rebbi for boys whose parents could not afford to do so. This obligation applies to Tanach only; there was no takanas Yehoshua ben Gamla for the community to pay the poor children’s rebbi to teach them Mishnayos or Gemara.

“Parents who refuse to pay tuition and plead takanas Yehoshua Ben Gamla — their position is indefensible,” Rabbi Gutman states emphatically — but this is the justification being bandied about by some demanding to not be billed for tuition.

“It’s happening more and more often,” says a Lakewood school administrator. “Families are coming to their tuition meetings saying the cost of educating our kids is your problem because we can’t afford it.”

It borders on a sense of entitlement.

The Shulchan Aruch HaRav’s elucidation allows us to approach this contemporary controversy with clarity, Rabbi Gutman says. First of all, the takanah is exclusively for Chumash, Navi, and Kesuvim. The cost of teaching Mishnayos and Gemara, and certainly anything else being taught in and provided by the school — think secular studies, extracurricular activities, and busing — are not included. Not to mention the cost of the contemporary infrastructure, including a state-of-the-art building, principals, and office staff.

“It would be presumptuous to assume that takanas Yehoshua ben Gamla could obligate the community to pay for these things, as they did not exist at the time of the takanah,” Rabbi Gutman says, and there was no takanah regarding hiring a rebbi to teach girls.

These arguments also have no merit because we don’t have the entity of a kehillah today in the litvish yeshivah world. The members of our communities don’t pledge allegiance to any particular kehillah nor do we pay dues to any particular community fund. Furthermore, our mosdos aren’t community mosdos — they’re private institutions opened and run by private individuals.

“That means these parents are asking for something that defies logic,” Rabbi Gutman says. “They’re saying, ‘You should open a school, and you should raise the money to teach my children.’ How did the administrators become obligated to you? The response to the parents should be, ‘I have a better idea. You open a mosad, and you raise the money to teach my children.’

“I’m not going to address the definition of what constitutes aniyim. But I will say this: fathers have an obligation to teach their sons the entire Torah. They do not have a chiyuv to go on vacation. They do not have a chiyuv to spend $5,000 on a bar mitzvah or $25,000 on a wedding,” Rabbi Gutman says. “A person can choose how they want to spend their discretionary funds — but not before they pay for their obligations. If they have money for discretionary purchases, they cannot be considered aniyim to be included in takanas Yehoshua ben Gamla.”

There is a standard of living appropriate for a person with X size income and Y size family, and if someone is living appropriately within his income, he may ask for a tuition reduction to help make ends meet, Rabbi Gutman elaborates, clarifying that a reduction doesn’t mean someone should throw himself on others, unless he is truly indigent — and in such a case, a person needs financial help and is entitled to receive tzedakah. “But let’s be clear — this is tzedakah, not takanas Yehoshua ben Gamla,” he says.

However, if someone’s standard of living is higher than appropriate for someone with his income and his size family, then no, he may not ask for a reduction in his tuition — he should first reduce his standard of living.

“I will say this: fathers have an obligation to teach their sons the entire Torah. They do not have a chiyuv to go on vacation. They do not have a chiyuv to spend $5,000 on a bar mitzvah or $25,000 on a wedding”
—Rabbi Avrohom Gutman

HALACHIC Q&A with Rabbi Doniel Neustadt

What are parents’ chinuch obligations toward their children? Does the community have an obligation to help finance a child’s education if the parent is unwilling or unable to pay tuition?

Parents are required to educate their children in a manner that will ensure they grow up to follow the Torah and mitzvos. In addition, parents have an obligation to teach their boys Torah so the boy can grow up to become a talmid chacham. Parents have no right to ask the community to pay for their child’s chinuch, since this is their personal obligation, no different than feeding or clothing their child. The only exception to that would be an orphan, who the community is obligated to support.

The obligation of parents to educate their children can be done in one of two ways: either they can teach the child themselves (homeschool) or they can hire someone to do the job for them (private teacher, regular school). In the case of the latter, parents are required to pay the tuition at the price the teacher or school sets. A parent can ask for a break if they cannot pay the full tuition bill, but it has to be an agreement between the parent and the teacher or school. This includes tuition, building fund, and all other fees the school charges in order to properly educate your child.

Can I use maaser for my son or daughter’s tuition?

The general rule is that maaser funds can be used only for an optional mitzvah, not a mitzvah in which you are already obligated. Since parents are obligated in chinuch, they cannot use maaser funds to pay their tuition bill, neither for boys nor girls. Tuition is not tzedakah, it is a financial obligation like any other financial obligation, which cannot be paid from maaser funds (which belong to tzedakah).

What if I am unable to pay my tuition bill without using maaser money?

In short, if you cannot afford to pay tuition, that means that you are not making enough money for basic living expenses, and you are exempt from maaser. To elaborate, maaser is given only by people earning more money than what is required for their basic living expenses, so parents who cannot afford to pay tuition unless they use maaser funds — which indicates that they are not earning enough income to cover basic expenses — are exempt from maaser altogether.

What comes first, paying tuition or donating to tzedakah?

Parents cannot claim to the school that they cannot afford tuition due to other tzedakah commitments. As explained, tuition is not tzedakah, but a pure financial obligation like any other expense, and that takes priority over any other commitment. This means that a parent has no right to ask for a break from tuition based on his desire to donate tzedakah to other organizations.

In addition to my tuition, am I obligated to make further donations to the school?

You and the school came to terms about your tuition payments, so you have no halachic obligation to give more to the school (and the school cannot require you to do that). It is certainly recommended to give extra donations to the school your children attend. Any additional donations (on top of tuition) that are not required by the school may be taken from maaser funds.

Do grandparents have a chiyuv of educating grandsons? And if so, how does it apply here?

A grandfather has an obligation to teach his grandson Torah, if his grandson has no father or the father cannot afford to hire someone to teach his son Torah. While the poskim disagree whether the grandfather is halachically obligated to pay tuition for his grandson, all agree that he should make his grandson’s tuition payment a priority over any other tzedakah.

Memo from the Back Office

Return on Investment

“Do you have a few minutes?” a parent asked as he walked into my office and sat down. “My wife and I just sold a business and made a nice profit — I want to give you a donation of $50,000.”

Surprised and grateful, I waited for the list of conditions that usually accompany a generous donation, but there were none! All he wanted was a receipt.

Rabbi Yitzchok Gottdiener, executive director of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn, New York

“If someone’s standard of living is higher than appropriate for someone with his income and his size family, then no, he may not ask for a reduction in his tuition — he should first reduce his standard of living”
—Rabbi Avrohom Gutman

Memo from the Back Office

Walking the Walk

“Tuition payments are getting a little steep,” a man with three girls in our school told me seven years ago. “Can we please have a break? I can afford $5,000 a child, and I’ll increase my payments over time.”

We agreed, and I sent the father his revised contract. A few hours later, he called my office and told me there was a mistake.

“The contract said I got a scholarship for $4,000, and my new total is $5,000 — that’s wrong! I don’t want you to write the money off, I want you to put the amount I can’t pay on the side, and I’ll pay back when I can.’”

I laughed.

“Rebbele,” I said, “I’ve been running a school for a while. Your life is only going to get more expensive as your family grows and your kids go to high school. You’re never going to pay me back, so keep the contract as a scholarship — it will mess up our books otherwise.”

“No, that’s not true,” he argued, and he proceeded to tell me about his father, who at was in his late sixties when he invited the children to a barbecue seudas hoda’ah.

“We were all curious — did he have a medical condition we didn’t know about, did something happen?” the man reminisced. “So we go, and my father announces, ‘I’m making a seudas hoda’ah today, because today I finally finished paying all of your school tuition from when you were children.’ Apparently, he had been making payments for twenty years — practically a mortgage!”

He took a deep breath.

“If my father could do it, I can do it.”

“You know what?” I said, “after that story, I’m willing to do it your way.”

Three years after that meeting, he asked the school’s tuition office what his deferred balance was over the past few years.

“More than $40,000,” he was told.

“I’m ready to start being charged full tuition,” he said. “And I want to start a payment plan of $1,000 a month to pay my deferred balance.”

Since then, not only has he paid it down, but he is also one of our school’s biggest donors — a kollel yungerman who went out to work, started doing well, and believed in tuition and in chinuch.

A Monsey girls school administrator

Part 4 — WHERE CAN SCHOOLS DO BETTER?

AT THE BACKEND AND WITH THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE

STREAMLINE ACCOUNTING: KNOW YOUR NUMBERS, AND BE HONEST AND TRANSPARENT ABOUT THEM.

Schools need to be more fiscally disciplined rather than “winging it” and hoping for the best, says Mr. Kilstein. He urges schools to take the first baby step: creating a functional and realistic budget. Review every line item, keeping only what’s necessary, and use real-time numbers for your costs, not guestimates, to get a realistic view of what the upcoming year will cost. Divide that number by total students to know how much the schools needs to bring in via tuition or fundraising per child to break even.

“For some reason, some schools plan as things come up, more along the lines of, ‘We just hired a new rebbi, now how are we going to pay his salary?’ or ‘We’re expanding, now let’s fundraise.’ A large percentage of schools just pay a bill when it comes across the desk if there’s still money in the bank account,” he says.

Another step in the right direction: schools hiring administrators with business backgrounds (which makes sense considering a school is a multimillion dollar operation), who run them in a more fiscally sensible manner.

Mr. Kilstein remembers a fundraiser who approached a donor for a large donation. The donor agreed on the condition that the yeshivah work with an accountant to provide proper reporting — and the school administrator declined, reasoning that opening the books would invite questions from parents about every little thing and make his job significantly harder.

Rabbi Chaim Shimon Neuberger, national director of Torah Umesorah, believes that was an error on the administrator’s part, because when you know your numbers while fundraising, there’s an awareness of what the school needs to collect. Schools with this knowledge generally have an easier time fundraising because donors appreciate putting their money to good use, and parents are more likely to pay when they know what’s really going on.

Mr. Kilstein explains, “Many middle-class families just pay what they’re charged; if you say tuition is $6,000, they’ll pay $6,000. If you show them the real cost is $10,000, they might struggle but they will pay — because attending your school is important to them, and they don’t want to accept a handout.”

During his seven-year tenure at Yeshiva Bais Mikroh in Monsey, New York, Rabbi Neuberger successfully raised tuition from $7,500 to $11,000 and persuaded many families to pay the maximum even though it was more than the cost of education (the surplus was used to supplement the losses incurred by the scholarship families) and the parent body wasn’t particularly wealthy.

However, despite Rabbi Neuberger’s success with his school, transparency and buy-in is a little easier said than done on both sides of the relationship. Mr. Kilstein says many of the schools he advises push back when told they need to be more transparent; they don’t feel comfortable giving parents that kind of access. Parents inherently think their tuition bill is unfair, he tells schools, but when they understand the school’s finances and that, in context, their tuition is reasonable, they’ll look at it like any other bill and want to pay it.

Not everyone agrees, argues Rabbi Levine, because suddenly, everyone becomes a budgeting guru and will start nitpicking on why you’re spending X on Y. He remembers when someone mentioned this idea at a Torah Umesorah Presidents Conference a few years ago, the attendees concluded it wouldn’t work on a public scale for this very reason.

“It’s never going to be as easy as a school opening their books and parents throwing wads of cash at them,” Mr. Kilstein responds. “But if a school consistently shows they’re transparent and honest, they will gain credibility and trust. I’ve seen it time and time again: when a yeshivah or Bais Yaakov is more transparent, they have an easier time with collections.”

Plus, he adds, parents are less likely to ask for a scholarship if they can manage without when they know the actual costs their child is incurring.

Rabbi Robinson lauds those on his parent body, who, since the start of the school year, have been coming through. At this point, 12 percent of the Nachlas parent body voluntarily pays full tuition (up from five percent in the summer), and other parents offered pay more tuition than they used do, even if they cannot pay full. Still others are donating more of their maaser to the school.

“Because they’re aware of our finances,” Rabbi Robinson says. “Transparency can be painful, but it works.”

When Ohr Hachinuch was facing its third consecutive year of six-digit shortfalls despite Rabbi Bitton’s best efforts, he decided to lay his cards on the table and share the school’s financial state with his parent body.

“Projections showed it was mathematically impossible for my school to enter the black unless we took drastic action,” he remembers, and he sent a letter to his parents delineating exactly what their costs were, how much debt the school was in, and what they needed parents to do.

“To my surprise, they were receptive and understanding. Barely a handful of parents called to complain, and most of them just needed some more clarity. We maybe had two very angry parents.”

Despite Rabbi Bitton’s best efforts to prevent it, one of his parents decided to share his letter on a popular WhatsApp group, and it went viral. Soon after, a parent started yelling at him in shul, “I’m going have to pay more tuition now because of what you did!”

Administrators understand why this is such a tough topic — many have large families, and everyone is struggling — and Rabbi Bitton doesn’t force anyone to pay full tuition, but he does want parents to pay what they realistically can.

“Pointing out that every dollar they save on tuition is a dollar of tzedakah I need to collect on their child’s behalf puts things in a different light,” Rabbi Bitton says. “Many people want to pay less, but not if it makes their child the subject of a charity drive.”

Ask him to open his books, and he’ll gladly comply.

“I have nothing to hide,” Rabbi Bitton says. “I won’t show a specific teacher’s salary — yes, people ask — but I will gladly show them how many employees, what payroll is, and every single line item on my budget. I want parents to view themselves as my partner in being mechanech their kids.”

Unfortunately, there is a sentiment that schools are ripping families off, which schools need to work to combat. When a school has a professional back office, a functioning, active board, and consistent policies, parents and donors have an easier time trusting the institution because it’s run logically and well. They know there’s a reason for what the school asks of them.

Rabbi Robinson says, “I’ve had people call and demand to know how much money I make in a year, which, as a public servant, I was willing to answer. But first I told them my work schedule and that I didn’t take a salary for the first few years of school, and then I asked, ‘How much should I make?’ I have yet to take home more pay than any of their answers,” he says. “If you’re confident in how your mosad is run and your numbers are verified, let parents see them. It gives you legitimacy.”

BUILDING TRUST

As a former rebbi-turned-executive-director, Rabbi Neuberger is familiar with the struggle schools face; his school, which was more than $3 million dollars in debt when he joined the administrative staff, was stable when he left.

“You need to respect parents as an equal shutaf (partner) with rights, as opposed to ‘someone who is sending their kids to your school.’ It’s a scary step, because schools don’t want their parent body to feel like they have a dei’ah in their yeshivah, but I say this: Let your parents have a dei’ah in your yeshivah,” he says. “If you take care of them, what do you think will happen in four months when you meet to discuss tuition? They’re going to push themselves to their limit — their real limit. If the parents feel personally invested in the success of your school, they’ll feel responsible to make sure it succeeds and to help with their time and money. Because it’s their school, too.”

Rabbi Neuberger advises keeping the relationship pleasant — even with parents who pay less than what you want.

“How many times does a school give a parent like that nachas calls about their kids during the year?” he says, remember a specific set of parents. “Don’t treat them like a burden; treat them like they made a million-dollar donation. I told them to call me any time with questions and kept them updated on their kids, even though they didn’t pay what we both knew I needed. And the next year, they paid more to support their school.”

Rabbi Gottdiener agrees that it’s important to treat parents like an authentic partner — because they really are.

“I had a serious problem with payroll before Pesach, so I reached out to my parent body for help and explained why I needed an additional $600,000,” he remembers gratefully. “People wired $50 to $60,000 in one shot! This was not something many of them could do on a regular basis, but they trust me that when I say it’s an emergency, that it’s an actual emergency. If I spoke to my parents only once a year when we negotiated their tuition rate, this wouldn’t have happened: you need to take the time to give nachas calls, participate in simchahs, and go the extra mile.”

Rabbi Robinson has spent years cultivating relationships with his parent body, going as far as taking them out for meals (he does this as a fundraiser in place of hosting a school dinner). He meets individually with every parent in the school, regardless of financial ability, over the course of four or five months. It’s a win-win, because these personal dinners, which cost Nachlas $15,000, bring in almost double the school dinner, which cost upwards of $100,000.

But it’s not just about the money, he says, it’s also about the annual check-in, which is quite valuable. There have been times Rabbi Robinson has deferred tuition for parents who told him they were in financial crisis. There was the time that he asked a parent who, at the dinner, mentioned he was doing okay, for a $15,000 donation — and he gave it. Aside from the financial payoff — people donate more than a $180-ad after the experience — the relationship is much stronger. Rabbi Robinson truly knows the Nachlas families, and the parents are more comfortable discussing concerns in this nonconfrontational setting and calling after because he is a person, not a figurehead.

Memo from the Back Office

Communication Is Key

Paying tuition is not easy, but if you communicate with us and behave pleasantly, we will do the same. There are so many people who would love to pay their tuition but just don’t have the money. I always tell parents that it’s easier for me to work with someone who answers the phone, even though I know it’s not a comfortable conversation to have.

Here’s the thing: You are not the first nor the last family struggling in this department. Whatever your situation is, I’ve heard it hundreds of times before — as well as stories that are significantly “worse.”

At my end, it’s easier for me to help a parent who tells me what’s going on than the parent I need to chase down who keeps dodging their bills and our phone calls. If you can’t afford the increase, don’t send your contract back all crossed out with “same as last year” scribbled across the top.

The administrator of a Bais Yaakov in Lakewood, New Jersey

“If the parents feel personally invested in the success of your school, they’ll feel responsible to make sure it succeeds and to help with their time and money. Because it’s their school, too.”
—Rabbi Chaim Shimon Neuberger

Part 5 — NOW WHAT? (OR WHAT CAN THE REST OF US DO BETTER?)

WHO KNOWS?

One administrator nostalgically reminisced about the kehillah-funded school system, explaining that people think tuition is negotiable because kids have to be in school. In reality, every viable community needs a school, and it’s your obligation to support it by virtue of the fact that you live there — even if you don’t have a kid in school.

Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.

“Today, we’re so used to it being ‘no one’s problem’ that it’s nearly impossible to make it someone’s problem. Monsey isn’t a community anymore. Lakewood isn’t a community anymore,”  he sighs. Not all the kids in your shul go to the school your kids do — but they’re in your shul and your neighborhood, and you should support schools you don’t even send to because those students make up the future of your community.”

Some envision a Tomchei Chinuch like Tomchei Shabbos, where families who can’t pay more than minimum tuition would benefit from a central fund by the wealthy of the community for the local schools — an endeavor that seems impossible to pull off and maintain, though some feel it has merits.

“You need to believe in the power of education and the importance of future doros,” says a Monsey administrator. Non-Jews believe that to a certain extent, which is why their private schools have multimillion-dollar endowments — now we need to raise awareness with those of us who have the financial ability: It’s crucial to support our mosdos. Aniyei ircha kodmim.”

Others suggest that budget increases need to be sustained by a buildup of donor bases.

“The wealthy of Klal Yisrael can afford our mosdos, even with our bigger budgets and with our rebbeim and morahs being paid what they deserve — the money is there,” Rabbi Neuberger says emphatically. “The Ribbono shel Olam is not bankrupt.”

Meanwhile, for those of us who are not poor but not wealthy, in the middle-and-struggling-but-not-getting-help class, those of us who get our kids braces and buy them new shoes and rarely go out to eat but buy pizza once a week and all the other things a frum family expects, and who dutifully pay, month after month, mortgage payments and rising grocery bills and yes, crippling tuition costs — what can we do? What should we do? We can’t go back in time and create a communal fund. We can’t fund endowments. We can’t all collect money from the same wealthy people.

We need to figure out what we can do. And do what we can.

Memo from the Back Office

Best of Times, Worst of Times

I’ve had families who are likely on Tomchei Shabbos who strain themselves to make sure every penny of their tuition contract is paid before July — and I have parents who are making serious money and get aggressive about a $200 increase. It’s not the money, it’s the mentality.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1030)