“Everyone agrees an education is a basic right. It should be the same for frum children”

Our cover story, “Opening the Books” in Issue 1030, about how today’s frum schools are collapsing under historic deficits while families are buckling under unprecedented tuition bills, continues to draw vigorous and passionate feedback, Here is a sampling:

We Need to Reprioritize

E. J.

The Mishpacha article “Opening the Books” about school tuition was masterfully written. The article obviously resonated with so many; before the print article even came out, it was rapidly making the rounds, and was the subject of much discussion among friends and acquaintances.

Often, articulating a problem is the beginning of the solution. Yet the words I’ve heard most often from those reading the article were “hopeless,” “intractable,” and “impossible.” I don’t believe this is the case. Let me explain.

Our communities have a finite amount of available resources. We can choose collectively how to allocate and prioritize these resources. For the most part, these are not individual choices. One family cannot go it alone outfitting the kids in Target shoes and Walmart winter coats when every other child in the class is wearing Italian leather shoes and brand-name coats.

Likewise, we can hardly expect a family to make a simchah that is far below normal communal standards, or to set up a chassan and kallah with basic Ikea furniture when the standard is to pay for a $12,000 to $14,000 furniture and bedroom package. Baruch Hashem, we have beautiful organizations to help all of those who cannot afford the normal standards, but allocating those resources to these needs makes them not available for our mosdos or chinuch.

The same goes for seminary, sleepaway camp, vacations, family cars, and so many other frum expenses. The individual household has limited leeway to deviate from the norm. Yet as a community, we are diverting both personal as well as organizational resources that could be used to fund our children’s schools and pay our teachers and rebbeim.

When simchahs and other expenses are taken into account, it is not an exaggeration to say that a large family with bar-mitzvah-age children and children in the parshah of shidduchim could easily be spending $30,000 to $40,000 annually on meeting community norms that would otherwise have gone to the chinuch of their children. Once again, it is largely not in their individual control; it is our communal and societal choices and priorities.

If we as a community can realize that there is a finite amount of resources and adjust our priorities and norms to reflect that, we can easily solve a large chunk of the “hopeless,” “intractable” tuition crisis our community is facing, by rightfully prioritizing the chinuch of our children, the future of Klal Yisrael.

The Choices We Make

A Reader Interested in Chinuch

Thanks for a great magazine, and an honest look at an issue that is truly vexing on all sides. I was surprised you didn’t mention a relevant and growing issue at many girls’ high schools: the costs of programming, swag, shabbatons, and extra curriculars.

Obviously, saving on these costs won’t solve the tuition crisis, but it might help shine some light on the economic choices that schools are making. Every parent, teacher, and student knows the value of such opportunities beyond the classroom. In many girls’ schools, from the most modern to the most insular, the costs of programming, swag, and food are incrementally growing.

We are in a time when schools are paying their teachers embarrassing salaries. Many teachers have not had salary increases in over a decade, and the minor raises that some recently received only offset more than a decade of salary cuts, so their raises had no real impact. And meanwhile the school is choosing to spend money on yet another piece of swag for every student? Or another set of delicious treats for the entire student body for the third time this month? Or a shabbaton hotel that costs a good portion of the school’s yearly operating budget?

Does anyone think about the cumulative effect of these combined costs over time? The schools doing this claim they are trying to retain and attract the types of students they want. But they don’t realize that in choosing school swag and food over teacher salaries, and leaving teacher salaries where they are, they are making a very clear statement about priorities. Frum girls should think very carefully before they consider entering this kind of profession, where after ten or fifteen years, they will be making virtually the same amount (adjusted for inflation) as they did in the second or third year....

Cutting down on these extras won’t solve the tuition crisis, or make a huge dent in it. But it might lead to some serious soul-searching about the lack of teachers coming into the system. There is no doubt that students need the extras beyond the classroom, but it’s high time for schools to think about their choices and frequency in funding these extras.

Parents can also think about the choices that they make in their own lives: When they choose to take a large family to a high-end destination for winter break, perhaps they should seriously consider contributing a percentage of the cost toward the salary of a teacher who could not afford to take her kids anywhere on winter break, because she had to choose between paying her mortgage or taking even a low-priced local vacation.

The tuition issue is nuanced and complex, and will not be solved by any magic formula. But there are ongoing choices made by individuals and institutions that may warrant introspection at this point.

Thanks for a great read.

Yasher Koach

Gershon Wolf, Chicago, IL

Gitty Edelstein’s article “Opening the Books” is as thorough and brilliant a magazine article as I’ve seen in a long, long time — if ever.

I imagine there are many more parents and grandparents like me who will at the very least seriously consider pitching in for tuition for family members after the eye-opening facts and poignant personal accounts Gitty Edelstein presented and portrayed.

Yasher koach to Gitty and to Mishpacha for this outstanding piece of work. May we see many fruits from it in the coming year, please G-d.

Falling Through the Cracks

A Concerned Chassidish Parent

Thank you for this important and well researched article!

While the article glossed over chassidishe schools, I want to bring up a subcategory of chassidishe children, parents, and schools who are struggling in a unique way. There are many chassidishe parents who choose a school for their child that is not “of their chassidus.” It might be a neutral chassidishe school that better serves their child, it might be that their chassidus doesn’t have a school in their location, it might be that their child has special or unique needs, it might be that their child was not accepted to their chassidus’s school…

Those families are paying into their chassidus’s community fund, which supports schools that they can’t send their children to. They are paying tuition for their children’s chinuch that is often higher than what they anticipated.

The neutral chassidishe schools (like the ones in Lakewood that were barely mentioned, and others in Monsey, Brooklyn, and smaller communities) are really struggling. The communities don’t take responsibility, the parents don’t see why tuition costs so much, the wealthy chassidim are giving to other causes and don’t see the need for such schools, the wealthy litvishe are donating to other causes and don’t see the need for such schools. These schools are not able to cover payroll and are losing the teachers that made them good schools to begin with. These schools, and therefore their students, are falling through the cracks — even in the discussion in this magazine.

We Need to Distinguish Needs from Wants

Shoshi

I appreciate that you invested so much time and effort in thoughtfully bringing the challenge of the tuition issue to the forefront for Klal Yisrael. However, I found myself feeling frustrated by the article overall. This was not because I don’t spend more on tuition than I do on my mortgage — in fact, I do.

After thinking about it at length, I was frustrated by your article because it seemed very New York–New Jersey centric, and the challenge of making tuition seems to be much more variable across the United States. Having lived in various states, including New York, over the years that my children have been in school, I found that overall, the tuition committees were fairly reasonable with my family.

They did ask for a lot of information, but their questions were understandable: Do you own a car? Do you have a cleaning lady? Do you take vacations? Having grown up in an era when needs had to be prioritized over wants, and appreciating that Jewish education is a need, and that tuition is the reality of living in a country where a public education is a right but parochial school education is a privilege — it was obvious which things would need to be understood as needs and which as wants. It’s complicated to live in a society that pretends that everything, from fancy shoes and clothing to sleepaway camp to gourmet takeout, is a “need.” I remember the days when Mishpacha had no ads. But a quick perusal of the magazine shows that people have a sense that they need to get more and more to keep pace with modern society.

What I felt was really lacking from your article was an honest discussion of needs and wants. Perhaps it was alluded to here and there, but even at the end of the article, it was suggested that the needs of a middle-class family include eating out occasionally and weekly takeout from the pizza shop. I beg to differ. Each family needs to be real with their actual needs, and I really doubt that weekly pizza is a need.

We are comfortable as a society with certain social norms — but those are no more needs for every family than having a cleaning lady is for every family. It’s possible to live life without those things, even if it makes it more challenging, if you have needs that you must take care of. A family can’t “have it all,” and if they have a limited parnassah, they need to live within their means. Perhaps it is even worthwhile for them to ask a sh’eilah: Should I get $40 of pizza per week or put that toward my kids’ tuition? I am raising the question knowing that the answer would not be the same for every family — but that is the point.

Thank you.

Chinuch Should Be a Basic Right

Name Withheld

The reality in our community is that the tuition for children’s chinuch paid by many families is choking them financially. Currently, even if you earn over $100,000, with just six children in school, mesivtas, or high schools, you are paying half of your income or more to tuition, while wealthy people are paying sometimes just five percent or less.

In recent years, the disparity between the haves and the have-nots has grown to an unprecedented level. The new wealth and the associated upscale lifestyles that we are witnessing among many in our circles should change how we look at chinuch. We previously looked at it as a service provided at a high cost to each family; instead we should view chinuch in yeshivos as a basic right, accessible to everyone in the frum community, without making anyone choke financially.

One idea would be to charge tuition on a sliding scale based on income or lifestyle. That would mean that a family with a standard of living 20 times higher (Succos in Israel, Pesach in Florida, extravagant simchahs) should perhaps pay ten times the tuition paid by a low-income family living simply. (As a reference, the public school system is funded from property taxes and state income tax, requiring the wealthy to pay much more for education.)

Then it could be worked out that everyone only has to pay a maximum of 10% to 15% of their income or lifestyle for all their children in school, high schools, and yeshivos. The details could be tweaked in a variety of ways, but the important point here is the concept — because currently, a wealthy person pays less than double the amount paid by the fellow who is barely surviving. The current system is just not right anymore. This solution reflects how it actually works in the chassidic community.

Of course, this change would be very difficult to implement in non-chassidic circles, as no one is committed to any particular school or kehillah. But it could be made the norm for the established yeshivah crowd in America. It just needs public support and a really brave leader in our society to push for this.

To those that will say this is a socialist idea, please realize that actually both Republicans and Democrats support funding the public school system with property taxes and income taxes, and no conservative has ever said it’s unfair the wealthy are paying much more for their children’s education. This is because everyone agrees an education is a basic right. It should be the same for frum children.

See Aruch Hashulchan Yoreh Deiah 245:10, which states the poor may send their children to the communal talmud Torah at no cost to them, while the wealthy must pay a lot. It is likely that anyone with a large family earning under $150,000 could currently be considered in the poor category according to halachah.

I wanted to throw this out there to start a discussion so that maybe some solution can be found, to alleviate the hardship faced by many in our society, with all of its ramifications in our homes and families.

Let’s Tap Their Acumen

Rabbi Pesach Lerner

I found the cover story on the “tuition chokehold” most informative, but also very challenging.

The article concludes, “We need to figure out what we can do. And do what we can.”

We need to start thinking way out of the box. An expression in fundraising applies here: There is the Charity pocket, and there is the Me pocket. The charity pocket can be depleted, exhausted. But the Me pocket — things I spend money on to benefit me — is still active.

Years back, schools outside of New York and New Jersey sold arba minim and shemurah matzah as a community service and a school fundraiser. No one asked for a lulav scholarship. Schools operate summer camps, with profits supporting the school’s scholarship fund. In Lakewood, new school buildings have catering halls; no one asks for a wedding scholarship. Institutions are sponsoring concerts and Pesach programs, and all profits support the institution. The Me pocket seems to still have money.

Maybe it’s time to gather our community leaders, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, experts in not-for-profit tax law, and the like. Ask them: “If my institution had $1 million to invest in a business, what would you suggest?” And if they come up with a great idea, ask them: “Lend us the funds to invest in that business, interest free, and agree to donate all profits to the school. And let these businesspeople operate the business, knowing that their loan being repaid is contingent upon them running the new endeavor successfully, as a business, not as a charity.”

Depending on the state, there may be businesses that only a not-for-profit institution can open and operate; there may be businesses that a school can open and operate, and, because of their not-for-profit tax status, realize more profit than a for-profit business would.

We have many smart businesspeople; let’s use their business acumen.

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

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1032)