Sunday, February 25, 2007
Who pays for the kids?
Here's a new twist on an old theme. In one community, schools have banded together to withhold (!) tuition assistance from families with more than 8 children. You heard right. The schools simply cannot afford to hand out free tuition to parents who were not responsible enough to plan for the financial stability of the families they were having. It's a novel thought - you want to have children, make sure you can afford to support them.
Labels: tuition
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
The future of the committed Jewish family
Here’s another take on the tuition crunch: Last week, the Jewish Advocate reported that putting one child through day school from K-12 costs $180,000 for the family, at least in the Boston area. That astronomical number gives grounds for posts like these.
It also brought to mind an article I read a few years back about a new form of “birth control” used in Jewish circles. It seems that some young families, troubled by the high cost of day schools coupled with their concern that their children stay within the framework of formal Jewish education, are opting to have fewer children than they’d like. The argument, in short, goes like this: “We can’t compromise on Jewish education for our children. At the same time, we make enough money to be charged full tuition, but if we pay full tuition for four children, we’d have to live on an extremely tight budget. So we’ll have two. Three, tops.”
That in mind, I conducted an informal and admittedly, not very scientific, survey of some young families I know on the East Coast. They are all middle class professionals – lawyers, doctors, software designers, etc. The results weren’t too encouraging—almost everyone mentioned it as a concern, and more than half said it was a significant factor in their family planning and that they weren’t going to have more than three children as a result and even that was a stretch.
Let’s not get into a discussion about the values involved in decisions like these, or the various options available to help finance your kids through schools (even if there are enough tuition breaks out there, perception is sometimes more important than reality). What’s clear is that this is actually happening, possibly in your neighborhood. So what is this going to do to American Jewish demography? Yes, there will be Orthodox families who aren’t going to let tuition influence family planning (some of those families will eventually make aliyah, in part to eliminate the need to pay day school tuition). And yes, there will be families who wouldn’t send their kids to day school anyway. But there will also be mainstream committed families--the ones whose kids have a lower chance of intermarrying because they're in day schools--who will have less children because of financial constraints imposed upon them by their Jewish commitment. So what does this mean for Jewish America?
It also brought to mind an article I read a few years back about a new form of “birth control” used in Jewish circles. It seems that some young families, troubled by the high cost of day schools coupled with their concern that their children stay within the framework of formal Jewish education, are opting to have fewer children than they’d like. The argument, in short, goes like this: “We can’t compromise on Jewish education for our children. At the same time, we make enough money to be charged full tuition, but if we pay full tuition for four children, we’d have to live on an extremely tight budget. So we’ll have two. Three, tops.”
That in mind, I conducted an informal and admittedly, not very scientific, survey of some young families I know on the East Coast. They are all middle class professionals – lawyers, doctors, software designers, etc. The results weren’t too encouraging—almost everyone mentioned it as a concern, and more than half said it was a significant factor in their family planning and that they weren’t going to have more than three children as a result and even that was a stretch.
Let’s not get into a discussion about the values involved in decisions like these, or the various options available to help finance your kids through schools (even if there are enough tuition breaks out there, perception is sometimes more important than reality). What’s clear is that this is actually happening, possibly in your neighborhood. So what is this going to do to American Jewish demography? Yes, there will be Orthodox families who aren’t going to let tuition influence family planning (some of those families will eventually make aliyah, in part to eliminate the need to pay day school tuition). And yes, there will be families who wouldn’t send their kids to day school anyway. But there will also be mainstream committed families--the ones whose kids have a lower chance of intermarrying because they're in day schools--who will have less children because of financial constraints imposed upon them by their Jewish commitment. So what does this mean for Jewish America?
Labels: community, day schools, Jewish demography, tuition
Monday, December 04, 2006
Is education worth paying for
This week, the in the NY Times there appears an interesting article on Asian enrollment. What I found particularly interesting about the article was the Asian parents response to requests for money: When a principal of one school asked the Korean Parents Association to help him raise some $4,000,000 (after he was already rebuffed by the school's PTA and other community members) their response was: $4,000,000? why not $40,000,000 and then they went out and raised the money.
In the Jewish day school community, one of the most common complaints is the price of schooling, how no one can afford it, how teachers and principals and everyone else in the system is making too much money. Few parents are willing to do anything other than complain. Fundraising is left for others to do (though I'm not sure who the others are)and many philanthropists are not willing to donate money so that others peoples' kids can get a good Jewish education. We want our children to get a good general education; we want them to have a good Jewish education; we'd like them to learn with other Jewish children; and we want them to have the best facilities and the best teachers - but we don't want to pay for it.
When the average expenditure per pupil in the public school system is over $10,000 (and as high as $15,000 in New Jersey and New York), is it reasonable for the community to focus on lowering costs rather than on raising quality?
In the Jewish day school community, one of the most common complaints is the price of schooling, how no one can afford it, how teachers and principals and everyone else in the system is making too much money. Few parents are willing to do anything other than complain. Fundraising is left for others to do (though I'm not sure who the others are)and many philanthropists are not willing to donate money so that others peoples' kids can get a good Jewish education. We want our children to get a good general education; we want them to have a good Jewish education; we'd like them to learn with other Jewish children; and we want them to have the best facilities and the best teachers - but we don't want to pay for it.
When the average expenditure per pupil in the public school system is over $10,000 (and as high as $15,000 in New Jersey and New York), is it reasonable for the community to focus on lowering costs rather than on raising quality?
Labels: day schools, fundraising, tuition
