The price of Jewish education

Jewish parents face high tuition costs nationwide

SORIYA DANIELS

Jews are continually focused on ways to ensure their future survival. Unlike generations of the past, today's greatest obstacle to Jewish continuity, particularly in America, is assimilation.

Many parents today believe that a Jewish day school education is the answer to the continuity question. Accordingly, more families are turning to Jewish day schools, at least those families that can afford its tuition. But not everyone can afford it, and a solution to this vexing problem has yet to be found.

According to an American Jewish Committee report studying the cost of living Jewishly in the United States, the average day school tuition is $11,000 per child, per year. A family with four children may be asked to pay as much as $44,000 a year to send their children to Jewish day school. Today only about 210,000 American Jewish children attend Jewish day schools. It is believed these numbers would increase significantly if the cost of tuition were reduced.

Arizona Jewish day school tuition generally ranks below the national average, but costs are still formidable for many families. For the 2003-04 school year, tuition ranged from $3,750-$5,200 for Beth El Kindergarten, to $11,000 for Jess Schwartz Jewish Community High School.

The AJC report concludes that not all Jews fit the upscale economic profile, and the community needs to encourage Jewish choices by making them more affordable to middle-income families. This is especially true given the continuing constitutional objections and opposition to governmental assistance to sectarian Jewish services, such as tuition tax credits or vouchers.

What are communities prepared to do?

"The whole issue of day school support is really a larger issue than any one federation can unilaterally resolve," says Ben Greenwald, chairman of the Task Force on Jewish Education, a project undertaken by the Associated Federation of Greater Baltimore. He would like to enlist the support of his entire community, as well as organizations on a national level.

"It's got to be a communal issue - working collectively with the federation, day schools, foundations, and community leadership to come up with viable financial solutions of the future," he says.

According to Greenwald, federations nationwide give approximately $2 million a year to their local Jewish day schools. "It's a per capita grant to the schools," he says.

This amount has remained steady despite cutbacks in funding to other federation-sponsored agencies in recent years. Most, however, do not set aside separate, additional funds for individual aid.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix has allocated approximately $258,000 for Jewish day schools in the 2004-05 fiscal year. Also, a small portion of the funding for the Valley of the Sun and Tri-City Jewish community centers benefits those centers' schools.

In Arizona, one antidote to the high cost of day school tuition is the Jewish Community Day School Scholarship Fund, a state tax-credit program administered by the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix, that serves seven participating schools: Jess Schwartz Jewish Community High School, The King David School, Pardes Jewish Day School, Phoenix Hebrew Academy, Tri-City Jewish Community Center Day School, Beth El Kindergarten and Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center Kindergarten. Last year, the scholarship tuition organization provided more than $950,000 in scholarship money to 221 students at the seven schools.

Donna Troisi is a Valley parent who will have two children at Jess Schwartz in the 2004-05 school year. She says that her family paid the full tuition price for the first two years her older child was at Jess Schwartz. "It was a priority for us," she says, "so we gave up certain spending habits, vacations and that sort of thing, so we could afford to send him."

However, after Troisi lost her job, the family began to receive scholarship money to pay for the children's tuition.

"We now get financial support from the STO, which is amazing and intensely appreciated," Troisi says. "The balance (of the tuition), we're just trying to make do. We have just made lifestyle changes."

Day schools have seen an explosion in attendance over the last 10 years. "There has been a 100 percent increase in enrollment," says Greenwald. "It's kind of a good news/bad news scenario because as the demand increases, the financial constraints also become more difficult."

Amian Frost Kelemer, the executive vice president of the Center for Jewish Education in Baltimore, Md., admits that local day school tuition "is a difficult nut to crack." She and Greenwald, however, were both quick to point out that Jewish day school tuition costs substantially less than other college prepatory schools; by contrast, tuition at most secular and/or Christian prep schools costs more than $16,000 for elementary school and exceeds $17,000 (including enrollment, book and athletic fees) by high school.

Rabbi Harris Cooperman, principal of the Phoenix Hebrew Academy, says that more than 50 percent of this year's students will receive financial aid. The academy provides more than $200,000 in scholarship money to its students apart from STO funding. Tuition for the school will cost approximately $7,000 this year. One Scottsdale father has three children in local day schools in the upcoming school year. While his family receives money from the STO to help out with tuition costs, he says "in a roundabout way, (tuition) may not be high enough, because in my opinion the teachers don't make enough money." He adds that Valley day school tuition is "pretty good" compared to the tuition that his out-of-state family members pay for their children's educations.

Still, he feels his children are getting a top-rate education. He cites smaller class sizes, more computer instruction, better field trip opportunities, a strong Judaic curriculum and the interaction with other Jewish students as advantages to day school.

Larry Levy, a Silver Spring, Md., attorney who enrolls his five children in Beth Tfiloh, an Orthodox day school that accepts students of all denominations, says "Beth Tfiloh has been wonderful in attempting to accommodate us with scholarships, but even with that, it's very tight," he says. "A tremendous amount" of his discretionary income is spent on tuition, though Levy says he doesn't consider it discretionary. "Jewish values are so much a part of our life in every aspect that we wanted their educational process to be consistent with that," he explains. "It's a choice we're making, and what that choice involves in terms of lifestyle is cutting down on vacations, things don't get fixed like they would, birthday parties are streamlined versions, and this happens in every aspect of our lives."

Levy adds, "We made a choice that we want them to get a high quality Jewish and secular education, and what that means is that we are going to have to defer a lot of areas of gratification that would otherwise be available to us."

Levy recognizes that not all families, even with a streamlined lifestyle, can make ends meet while shouldering tuition costs. "It would be nice if our Jewish communal priorities were such that more funding would go to day schools to make it possible. For too many families, it is not even an option. Even with generous scholarship assistance, they can't even do it, though they would like to do it."

The high cost of Jewish education imposes the greatest strain on those families whose income is low to mid-range, but not quite low enough to qualify them for scholarships. Given the recent economic downturn, this sub-group is growing in numbers, which affects every Jewish day school since they all dole out financial assistance when needed.

Beth Tfiloh grants financial assistance to 30 percent of its 1,000-plus students. "We're seeing a lot more parents applying for financial aid," says Joan Feldman, director of communications at the school. She calls it "the middle-income rut."

Feldman says, "We give out annually approximately one million dollars in financial aid." The school's recent gala raised $750,000 to go toward tuition for next year. Feldman states that even with fund raising and federation assistance, it is an ongoing challenge for the school to meet its own needs.

It appears that tuition costs directly correlate with the cost of living in a given community or sector. In Dayton, Ohio, where the cost of living is relatively inexpensive compared to Manhattan and even Baltimore, tuition ranges from $6,000-7,000 per child at the community Jewish day school. Similarly, Tucson Hebrew Academy, the only Jewish day school in southern Arizona, charges $6,000-7,000 and gives a healthy number of scholarships. By contrast, upscale Jewish day schools in Manhattan, such as Ramaz and Heschel, cost upwards of $20,000.

"There is no average in New York; it is a range," said Rabbi Ellis Bloch, director of yeshivas and day schools at the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York. "In New York, where you're dealing with hundreds of schools, with denominations running from Hasidim to Reform, that have such vastly different expectations, the cost of running the schools will vary quite widely." Tuition in New York ranges from $5,000 to $22,000 a year.

The Jewish community of Akron, Ohio, has addressed the high cost of a Jewish education by providing grant money to all Jewish students who attend their community's school, the Jerome Lippman Jewish Community Day School. The Millennium Fund grants make Lippman Day School the most affordable in the nation. The community
sees its agenda as a pilot program for other communities to replicate.

With the exception of a few lone states in the country, such as Arizona and Wisconsin, proposed voucher programs and tax credits whereby families would be allowed to apply a certain amount of their tax dollars toward sectarian education have been met with myriad constitutional objections, both in court and in the legislature.

State constitutions forbid the advancement of religion with public monies, and nearly all state courts have upheld this "division of church and state." In 1999, the Ohio Supreme Court struck down school voucher programs, and many states have followed in suit.

Currently, Arizona taxpayers can donate up to $625 per year to tuition organizations in lieu of paying the same amount in state income tax.

Jurisdictions in Canada, such as Ontario and Alberta, have found relief in various initiatives. A recent Ontario government ruling grants up to $3,500 in tax credits each year to children enrolled in Jewish day schools. The credit "goes a long way toward addressing" the issue of the high cost of day school education, says Rabbi Yisroel Janowski, founding and outgoing president of the Ontario Association of Jewish Day Schools, which represents 45 schools and numerous communal Jewish groups across the province.

In Alberta, Jewish day schools receive the same funding as the Catholic schools and public schools. As a result, tuition is kept at a more reasonable $5,000, and further subsidies are available.
What is the community prepared to do? Perhaps individuals and their community leaders could petition state legislators to grant vouchers or state tax credits for sectarian schools. Elderly people in the community can consider Jewish education in their estate planning. Philanthropic foundations might also be a benefactor, and federations always welcome additional contributions.

The solution is no small task, even for a federation-backed task force. The stakes are not small either. The future of Judaism today, one community at a time, could depend on it.

"Jewish education is the key, I believe, to Jewish survival," says Cooperman. "We live in a very difficult era, and assimilation is extremely high. In order to guarantee as much as humanly possible that our children continue on, with the same hopes and ideals, Jewishly, that we have, we have to give them the tools that are necessary in order to achieve their goals. One of the most important tools we can give them is a good Jewish education."

Soriya Daniels is a Florida-based free-lance writer. Special Sections Coordinator Jennifer Goldberg contributed to this article.

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