{Originally posted to author’s website, Emes Ve-Emunah}
One of the many problems plaguing the Orthodox Jewish community is the high cost of Jewish education. In an existential sense, I think it is the biggest problem of all. That is no secret here. It is a subject that is dealt with regularly. One which seems to defy resolution.
To briefly re-state the obvious, a decent Jewish education that provides high quality religious and secular studies programs with high quality teachers is expensive. School budgets require enormous sums of money to pay for that. You are not going to get high quality teachers if you don’t offer them a decent living wage.
It is therefore not rocket science to see that the cost of all faculty and administration salaries plus overhead (including supplies and equipment) divided by the number of families in a school would make decent middle class income all by itself. $80,000 dollars is not an exaggeration these days as a total figure based on a $20,000 cost per child for a family with 4 children.
I have expressed my frustration at these numbers in the past and have found little in the way of solutions that would lessen the financial burden on parents. The fact is that no parent is ever asked to spend their entire income for tuition. That means that every family of typical size (except for the very wealthy) gets a reduction in tuition. Which the school board has to make up in their fundraising projects.
In the vast majority of cases, there is a shortfall in the budget at the end of the year that requires the school to borrow. If this happens every year… the debt load of the school becomes unsustainable and eventually lending institutions will stop lending.
There are some very creative ways that some schools have found to raise money. Some of them quite annoying, but necessary. Like school money. Schools actually print their own money which can be used at various establishments in lieu of actual cash. Parents are required to buy it from the school at face value and spend it to buy goods from prearranged stores and assorted vendors. Who then take that money and exchange it at the school at a discount. (Not sure what it is – but let’s say 10%). That means that the school makes 10% of every school dollar bought and spent by a parent. If the school requires that parents buy $10,000 worth of school money, then the school brings in an additional $1000, per family. If there are 500 families in a school, that’s a half million dollars – a hefty return on that project.
There is the Kehilla Fund here in Chicago which every community should have. This very successful project ends up with a similar amount of money distributed to all the Orthodox schools here. It entails pledging a fixed amount of money every month to the fund – having it automatically charged to your credit card. People can pledge as little as $5 to as much as they want. From their beginnings in 2004 to date they have distributed over $7,000,000.
There is the Yosef Walder plan or finding quality secular studies teachers and sharing them with all the schools. Their salaries are divided by all the schools… and they teach in all of them. The schedules of each school are co-ordinated so that that teachers subject is taught at a different time in each school. This can be done with all secular subjects.
In Chicago, the Jewish Federation allocates a hefty sum to each of the schools based on the number of children enrolled. They have also established an endowment fund specifically designed for Jewish education.