The tuition-reform plan came about through 38 public meetings with active participation by three-quarters of the parents. According to the plan’s two authors, Arthur Vitullo-Martin and Frank Roosevelt, enactment of the plan had the benefit of not only securing the school’s financial health, but also decreasing the divisiveness between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Roosevelt, an economics professor at Sarah Lawrence College, cited the inequity of the traditional scholarship system, under which families receiving scholarships had to provide full financial disclosure while full-tuition families did not.
The scholarship families also felt they had less influence on the school than wealthier families. Vitullo-Martin, research director at Metroconomy, a public policy research firm, stated that the Manhattan Country School plan would be particularly apt for religiously-affiliated schools, because the plan asks parents to return to the traditional practice of tithing.
The school’s website contains several reports detailing the history and philosophy of the unique tuition plan. In one notable passage Vitullo-Martin writes, “For some Orthodox . . . Hebrew Day Schools, [adoption of] the [Manhattan Country School] tuition reform plan involves no radical change at all, since those communities expect parents to contribute according to their means. The tuition reform plan will help formalize an expectation already existing in those schools [emphasis added].”
A similar example comes from the University of California, the nation’s largest state university system. Faced with rising costs and the political impracticality of raising taxes, state legislators devised a plan in July 2003 to charge students with family incomes exceeding $90,000 as much as $3,000 more per year.
Now let’s take a hypothetical step. Orthodox Jewry adopts the Jewish Tax Return, or a tuition-reform plan akin to the Manhattan Country School plan. To whom would we write our checks?
The United Yeshiva and Hebrew Day School Fund
The Mormon Church has raised billions for its schools and institutions. So has the Catholic Church throughout America. The United Negro College Fund has also raised billions.
As a tuition-paying parent, I find it shocking that no comparable body exists in the Jewish world to which someone can make a contribution. A philanthropist who likes yeshivas and desires to give, but wishes to do so collectively, lacks an address to which he can send a check.
This is no small omission on our part. In April 2003 a report issued by the Institute for Jewish & Communal Research, authored by Gary Tobin and Jeffrey Solomon, found that only six percent of the $5.3 billion in mega-gifts Jews donated to individual institutions between 1995 and 2000 went to Jewish institutions. A mega-gift is $10 million or more.
“Something is wrong,” said Gary Tobin, president of the institute. “This study points to a very serious problem in Jewish philanthropy and in the Jewish philanthropic structure.”
Might it be that the “something wrong” is the simple lack of a well-promoted Orthodox name and address to whom philanthropists can direct donations? Perhaps. But we won’t know unless we try, and we won’t get unless we ask.
We need to establish a United Yeshiva and Hebrew Day School Fund.
If a Jewish Tax Return or tuition-reform plan were to be created, decisions would need to be made on where to direct the money – how much to the parents’ yeshiva, howmuch to the newly-established United Fund, and how much to other worthy causes. And once the United Fund were established, how much money, and to whom, would it distribute? How much would it invest and deposit in stocks, bonds, and banks in order to generate income and interest?
These would be pleasant decisions to make compared to the type of decisions being made today in yeshivas – i.e., whom do we pay first, the oil company or the electric company?
A National Association of Parents
Finally, how do we, the parents, get these and other ideas for raising money for Jewish education heard where it counts – and then put into action? Currently, there is no forum for us aside from letters to the editors of Jewish newspapers, which, I believe, have been of help in keeping this issue alive.
My own thought, as I wrote in a letter to this newspaper some months back, is that, yes, klal Yisrael needs one more organization: a National Association of Yeshiva and Hebrew Day School Parents and Friends. The agenda would consist of promoting tzedakah and maaser for yeshivas and day schools; pursuing all other funding sources, including the Lawrence Plan; counteracting domestic strife, abuse, and other social ills; improving secular studies; and enhancing our children’s physical health through a proper school-based regimen of diet and exercise.
Will accomplishing these goals be easy? Of course not. The status quo is never easy to change. Pessimism, cynicism and apathy can be our greatest enemies. And who wants to pay taxes – American taxes, Israeli taxes, or Jewish taxes? The answer, of course, is that the Torah wants us to pay taxes – and therefore we shouldwant to pay them.
The Chofetz Chaim famously said that when he was young, he tried to change the world; and when he didn’t succeed he tried to change Lithuania; and when he didn’t succeed there he tried to change Vilna; and when he didn’t succeed with that he finally resolved to change himself and he did – and it was then that he was able to change Vilna, Lithuania, and the world.
I humbly believe that we Jews need to do the same on a communal basis. For too long we’ve been seeking funds for our schools from the government and secular Jewish organizations, and have mostly failed. Perhaps Orthodox Jewry first needs to change itself – and then everything else will follow.
