Speak Up! Economic Crisis Hitting Jewish Day Schools

by rabbifink on May 17, 2009 · 6 comments

I blogged a little while back about the pinch being felt in Jewish Day School and Yeshivas.

The LA Times must be reading my blog because they finally caught on to this growing problem. Today I read about the familiar names in our Los Angeles Jewish community who are suffering budget crises.

Is there hope for our schools? Is it possible to sustain a system that requires such tremendous financial commitment from its families?

Last time I reiterated the Torah’s priorities for charity. Charity for Torah education is pretty near the top of the list. It is above non-education communal needs. Unfortunately, the public does not keep these priorities. I think this could help the situation tremendously but I know there is a lot more that could be done.

Tuition costs are nearing $10k for elementary school children and are significantly higher for high-school and secondary education. The cost are astronomical and aside from the schools failing financially, some parents are having a very difficult time staying afloat economically.

I want to harness the power of the web to try and solve this problem.

What do you think?

Is there a solution?

Can this sysem be saved?

Do you have a better system?

Related posts:

  1. Tough Times for Private Schools and Yeshivas
  2. Simple Justice | The Story of Brown v. Board of Education: The End of Separate But Equal in Schools
  3. Humanitarian Crisis in Nigeria

Tagged as: day school, economic crisis, education, social-networking, yeshiva

  • Elie Goldstein

    Young members of the Baltimore community came up with a brilliant idea, endorsed by the local Rabbis, with a system to continue to generously give charity and in a way try to benefit the local schools at the same time. http://commitment.activustech.com/ has information on what they’re doing and is definitely worth reading.

    Elie

  • http://rabbifink.wordpress.com rabbifink

    I checked out the site and we definitely need more movements like this across the country.

    Thanks Elie!

  • Chaim Gross

    Charity begins at home, so does home schooling. The mean jewish high school tuition of 22,000 a school year is prohibitive.No tax benefit is granted and yet a portion of our tax dollars goes to a public school system that is not utilised by children in Yeshivot.A family with three children in the teen years looking for schooling cannot sustain such potential debt. Add the incremental school building funds,books,Israel school trips,summer camps and declining job market the spiral gets devastating.
    An Arab president will never understand.
    Jewish, Yeshiva, Tutors after school,intergrated by and with local shuls to complement public school with attempts at synthesizing with local public schools in a magnet program would be more economical although neither immediate nor adminstratetively easy but could ease the sunami thats coming.Cutting tuition down such as done in the Catholic day schools is also a realistic response; our childrens education goals have to be matched with resources to be sustainable.

  • Natan Pandolfi

    Chaim is right: a large portion of our tax dollars goes to a public school system that is not utilized by our children. Either we get that back or, in the presence of a substancial Jewish demand(a) the system pays for the secular studies (which we have already paid with our taxes)(b) we pay for our daily kodesh within the premises.
    Seen this done in Canada.

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