Crawling out from under the rock of day-school tuition
"Now that the economy has crumbled and a critical mass of people are newly broke and worried, I am inspired to “out” myself as a committed Jew who has spent the past quarter century being broke and worried, forced into a state of financial struggle and work-related stress due to the high cost (and high-priced accoutrements) of being Jewish in a major metropolitan area."
So writes publicist Shira Dicker in an opinion piece in The New York Jewish Week.
After watching a friend withdraw her child from a New York day school because she simply could no olonger afford the $30,000 per year tuition, Dicker, who is married to journalist Ari Goldman, says that she is finally emboldened to speak out about the tremendous burden that the day-school system placed upon her own family.
In order to put three children through day school, she writes, the Dicker family made “a commitment that absolved us not of luxury items but of basic necessities":
Yet until this moment I kept my counsel, marveling at how easily so many others seemed to be providing this basic Jewish amenity for their kids, loathe to be dubbed a kvetch or a bad Jew. Nor would I want inadequate salaries for day school educators. So I bit my tongue and signed checks. I bartered when I was able. I took on additional commitments. I deferred the dream I nurtured since childhood and pursued a professional path where I was certain to make a higher income. I put off my plan of returning to graduate school until such a time that my family would be able to do without my income, never mind the cost of my own tuition.
What she describes is a day-school system that was built in a time of affluence that survived on what is in essence a system of financial peer pressure and demeaning scrutiny from schools’ financial aid departments that made it almost shameful to speak out about the high cost of a premium Jewish education system that became cursory in some circles – and only now that the Jewish community is financially stressed does she feel comfortable kvetching.
Fundermentalist’s take: I tend to agree with Dicker… and this is my real concern about the way the Jewish organized world works.
We have great ideas about how to create Jewish continuity and future, great, big, expensive ideas -- among them Birthright Israel, Jewish overnight camps, high-end preschools, and the ever growing landscape of niche, boutique Jewishly innovative projects. Most of these projects are well intentioned and have some merit and value.
The problem is that our philanthropic appetite has been much bigger than our wallets could afford, a problem that only now is really coming into the light.
The day-school system is perhaps the best example of this. There is arguably no better way to insure that a Jewish child will grow into a Jewishly aware adult than by sending him or her to a day school. The problem is that the day school system costs $2 billion per year according to some estimates. And of that $2 billion, $500 million is required for financial aid.
Just to put it into perspective, for years there has been pipe dream talk about creating a superfund to build an endowment to provide for day-school tuition assistance. If need for financial aid stayed steady at a half a billion dollars per year -- which it clearly will not -- the community would need a $10 billion dollar endowment to underwrite the cost, and that is if investors could figure out how to make a five percent return on that $10 billion investment each year, another big assumption.
Even in good times, some observers say, this probably is an unsustainable model. So how is the Jewish community supposed to afford it in a recession?
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Like the Dicker/Goldman family, my wife and I also make choices and sacrifices in order to send our two daughters to the Rashi School in Boston - and to support the school since tuition alone does not cover all costs.
In the spring, our 6-year old started a tzedakah project that raised $3,000 dollars (for a kindergartner, it might as well have been a million). To us, there is no question that this is money well invested in the future of our community. Is it a lot? Yes. Do I wish it didn’t have to be so much? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely.
Thanks,you, Josef, for joining this conversation.
Here’s the matter I want to clarify: the cost of J Day School in a city like New York - where my son’s tuition will be $30,000 this year—is so astronomical as to bat it WAAYYY out of the ballfield of anyone except the affluent.
And the non-affluent, which include many educated professionals, are in a tight spot, finding themselves suddenly in a position of have with having to ask for scholarship funds to provide this “necessity” for their children.
Put another way, the price tag on this tuition makes is a luxury item, masquerading as a necessity for those who are communally commited.
No one, certainly not I, is contesting the value of the Jewish day school environment, though I am open to hearing arguments as to why we should return, en masse, to the public school system.
What I am bringing to public attention is the fact that there is a huge problem with the cost...and that frankly, this old, debunked sacrifical attitude is all wrong.
Those who still speak of high day school tuition being an investment that is “worth it” are typically those for whom the financial sacrifice is not all that dramatic.
For instance, would you think that being left without health insurance in order to pay your kids’ education bills is a worthwhile trade-off? Or accruing debt? How about being left with no savings account? Having to work two or more jobs? Having to curtail your maternity leave so get back to work ASAP? Reducing the number of children you would otherwise have?
How about having to work on Shabbat to catch up on the extra projects you took on to make the tuition payments? Or doing a quick calculation and realizing that sending your kid to day school precludes Jewish summer camp, a really potent and proven identity builder. or a year-long course of study in Israel?
There has been a completely myopic understanding of the disparity of income levels within the Jewish community. Most people, when they say sacrifice are talking about fancy vacations. Or fewer vacations. Or THINGS.
They are not talking about something that changes your entire quality of life.
For people like me, the things that have been sacrificed have been critical to leading a sane and responsible life. For people like me, life has often taken on a nightmarish quality due to the relentless stress as we hustle to make enough to cover the bills.
AFter 22 years of paying into this system, i hardly sit back and pat myself on the back, thinking, “phew! look what I did for my kids!”
Instead, I am thinking of a better system.
I have only deep gratitude for what my kids have gotten from their Jewish day school experiences. Still, I’m not sure that you and I are talking about the same thing when we use the word sacrifice.
Kol hakavod to the Blumenthal and Dicker/Goldman families. By continuing to send their children to Jewish day schools, they are making a clear statement that a day school education is not only an economic proposition but a values proposition - and one they believe worth sacrificing for. I too believe strongly in that values proposition, which is why my four children are all in or will be in day school.
By no means, though, does this mean that we should have to sacrifice. Schools must also be affordable economic propositions. As a community, we need to give some serious thinking to how we can change the status quo. Some things we should put on our agenda: 1) creating economies of scale to help schools succeed in a fiscally responsible way, 2) finding ways to use new technologies to bring down costs, 3) encouraging day school collaborations that lead to cost savings, 4) attracting new philanthropists, and 5) advocating for constitutionally acceptable government funding.
In a recent piece in The Jewish Week, Gary Rosenblatt suggests that we should take an AIPAC-style approach to day school education. We should focus our energies on advocating government support of the secular side of day school education. Why not? Many Western countries — England, Australia, France, Mexico, parts of Canada — already cover the costs of general studies at parochial schools. We need to set up PACs, contact legislators in significant numbers and support organizations taking the case for funding of secular activities at parochial schools to the state legislatures. If we could succeed…..it could change the face of Jewish day schools.
Shira, it does sound like, perhaps, we are talking about a different level of sacrifice - fortunately, Boston’s day schools are far from $30K in tuition. But, paying that tuition does come at a cost - a lack of savings for college or retirement, as well as a greatly diminshed capability to support other important causes and institutions - as examples. A cost that many families like mine must contend with, if we continue to value Jewish education.
Despite the economy, in an age when our community can fund countless organizations, institutions, synagogues, political efforts...the list goes on...I find it surprising that the greatest minds in our community are unable to find a solution to the high cost of a day shool education.
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Gil
08/19/09 03:22 PM
You’re starting to sound like Marvin Schick.