I've been noticing more and more people who comment here and on other blogs who are discussing a move of their children into public schools because they simply cannot afford yeshiva tuition any longer. It's not that these people do not value an education in limudei kodesh: they do. They mention that they will have to go the private hiring way to get their children this Jewish education. It seems that there are only two choices when it comes to educating our children: send to a yeshiva or send to public school and give private lessons in limudei kodesh. But perhaps there is a third way.
Traditionally, yeshivas offer their limudei kodesh instruction in the mornings and their secular education in the afternoons. What if the model was reversed? What if limudei kodesh instruction was in the afternoon? This could allow those parents who cannot afford a full day of yeshiva tuition to send their children to public school in the morning hours and still take advantage of the afternoon hours of limudei kodesh instruction in a school setting. It should, at least in theory, cut tuition at least in half.
Yes, I know that it is not something that yeshivas are going to want to do; why should they offer a program that will reduce the amount of money coming into their school? One reason is fairly simple: through the high tuition now charged they are already pricing some of their prospective "customers" out of the ability to "buy" the product being offered. Let's look at a theoretical yeshiva and see how this would work out in practice.
The yeshiva has 200 students in it. 50 students pay no or virtually no tuition at all. 100 students pay a reduced bill for tuition, varying in amount of tuition reduction. 50 students pay full tuition. Which are the parents who are most likely to be thinking about taking their kids out of yeshiva? The ones who are paying full tuition. While there will be some parents who are not strapped in paying the full tuition price, more of the parents who are paying full tuition will find that they are struggling to pay the full tuition and do not qualify for any aid from the yeshiva. Because the only people who can/will pay for the almost yearly tuition hikes are those in this top 25%, the burden of supporting the rest of the yeshiva falls on their shoulders, a burden many of them can no longer afford. So what happens if 10 of those full tuition paying students should leave the yeshiva? What about if 20 did so? The yeshiva would have no choice but to raise the tuition for those getting tuition reduction, a cost those families might not be able to pay. They would have no choice but to start charging tuition for those who are paying no tuition, a cost those families might not be able to pay. In short, at a minimum, losing 10 full tuition paying students would also mean that 10-20 students paying only partial or no tuition would also end up leaving the yeshiva. Have 20 full tuition students leave the yeshiva and you would have 20-40 partial tuition students who could no longer afford to attend yeshiva. Such a scenario would have the yeshiva losing from 10% to 30% of its students. It would also mean that the yeshiva would lose from 20% to 40% of its full tuition paying parents.
If the yeshiva were to offer an afternoon limudei kodesh program instead of a morning one, those parents priced out of a full yeshiva education might still be able to afford the half-day program. The yeshiva would not be losing the full funding that would leave if parents completely pulled out of the yeshiva. Students would have the benefits of a fully organized limudei kodesh program, as well as the socialization benefits. Would the yeshiva need to tighten its belt financially? Sure it would, or it just might have to become better run financially speaking.
Would this work for every yeshiva and for every parent? Perhaps not, but it does offer an alternative to the yeshiva/no yeshiva dichotomy that is presently the only model available. Faced with losing a real chunk of the student body and the money that student body represents, yeshivas might finally be willing to look at different models for how they are funded and how those funds are allocated. They might have no choice but to rethink their "traditional" method of operation.
Is this the only non-traditional option available? Probably not, but no one seems to be looking for new ways to solve our burgeoning yeshiva tuition problem. This at least represents a starting point in the conversation that is long overdue.
NOTE: In discussing this over Shabbos, a fourth variation came out. This would be one where the yeshiva offers its traditional schedule of morning limudei kodesh classes and afternoon limudei chol classes, but in addition they would offer an afternoon session specifically for those whose children are in public school in the earlier hours.
14 comments:
will never happen for 2 reasons (although i guess i should never say never):
1) jewish schools will not relinquish their monopoly and admit that there could possibly be another modality for jewish education
2) no rav is going to going to get behind this. even in in highly-concentrated MO communities (i'm thinking woodmere and teaneck), where this idea should be easiest to implement (for logistic and hashkafic reasons), it has been rejected.
the only way i could see it working is if it were a small-scale school/framework organized *completely* de novo by parents who have already committed to putting their kids in the public schools.
Have to agree with Lion that this won't work now. But, it could work when schools get to the point you mention of losing their full tuition paying parents. Those are the parents who are subsidizing everyone else. Until it starts to really hurt schools in their funding the schools won't consider anything non-traditional.
Although the public school day is short, it doesn't end until 2:30 or 3:15 (depending on district and school, obviously). You can't send your kid to half a day of public school, so given time for transportation, limudai kodesh is not going to start until 3 or 3:30. We're getting awfully close to afternoon "Hebrew school" here, and none of us have great memories of that. What about davening, etc?
I agree with lion (as usual) that this is unlikely to work. but i dont think it's a full movetoward "hebrew school". firstly some districts are starting to offer hebrew langauge- and with enough "requests" more may also. so the afternoon school will not need to teach hebrew. perhaps a jewish history course can also happen at the public school. at the jewish school they wont need to learn hebrew because they got that during the day(and they'll be better than their yeshiva bretherin in that), the knowledge of hebrew will help them in their learning. And most importantly they'll learn the beauty of judaism (yeshivas dont all teach that). the afternoon yeshivas can be in shuls, given by rabeyim who finished their morning sessions at a yeshiva...
From what I rememebr reading, this was tried already (in my grandparents generation) with the afternoon Talmud Torahs and generally wasn't to successful. Ny basically telling the kid that Torah is an afterthought to be done in the afternoon, I can't forsee much success in really educating the kids in Torah and yidishkeit. The average Yeshiva has about 5-6 hours in limudei kodesh and 2.5-3.5 hours of secular studies. No kid is going to be willing or want to sit for 5 hours in the afternoon to learn, while they still have to go home afterwards and do their homework for the next morning.
The public school day may be shorter than yeshiva, but it IS long. Kids spending a full day in PS will not be able to learn Torah as long or as well as those in yeshiva who spend their whole morning and most of their energy on kodesh.
There are other reasons I can think of for not wanting one's children in PS, but perhaps there's some way we could get a charter or magnet school that would better suit our needs. It still would not be a yeshiva, but better than current PS.
Not saying the entire idea goes out the window, but it needs a lot of work. A LOT.
Just a thought here. Many people who are considering public schools for the secular portion of their children's educations have mentioned that they would need to hire private teachers for the limudei kodesh portion of their children's education. I want to point out that if they do so some of the comments made here are going to apply to them. The kids get home in the late afternoon. The number of hours available for limudei kodesh instruction are therefore limited. Unless a group of parents got together for this education the child would have no socialization with other frum kids during the school week--where would there be any time? And if parents are going to get together in a group to offer after PS limudei kodesh, then what is the real difference between that and what is being suggested? There will still be travel time to get from one school to the parent group. Why would the parent group really be any different from a Talmud Torah model?
Just for the record, some of the Talmud Torah problems in the past were because of the verrrry diverse Jewish observance backgrounds of the students in the Talmud Torah. Portland did not have a day school yet when I needed to start school so Talmud Torah and Sunday school was offered through two of the shuls. The attendees in the Talmud Torah were for the most part from traditional or Conservative backgrounds rather than from frum backgrounds. Yes, I was bored, because the teacher had to start from aleph and I was way beyond that. A Talmud Torah model with only frum kids in it would avoid some of the problems in a mixed Talmud Torah.
Until the free market speaks, day schools and yeshivas won't move an inch. One local day school is reportedly "only" raising the already massive tuition by less than 6% and the board points out that this is a small raise compared to the last 5-10 years. Might be a small raise, but I think we are officially priced out.
If others are also priced out, they will have to look for alternatives and the schools will have to look for alternatives too should they want to survive.
So long as enrollment doesn't drop drastically, the schools will see no need to create an alternative if they believe that parents will somehow come up with the money, which many institutions seem to still think is the case.
Speaking of markets, someone told me that in Baltimore (?) there are homeschoolers wanting a Kodesh option in school and at least one school has a part time tuition plan. I don't know if this is true, but if it is, the schools are simply reacting to a growing market.
ProfK - Traditionally, yeshivas offer their limudei kodesh instruction in the mornings and their secular education in the afternoons.
At my kids school, they alternate the order of classes. There is an 'A' and a 'B' class - the A class has Limudei Chol in the morning followed Limudei Kodesh in the afternoon for the first half of the year, and Limudei Kodesh in the morning followed by Limudei Chol in the afternoon for the second half of the year. The 'B' class does the opposite. This way they can have the Limudei Kodesh teachers working all day and the Limudei Chol teachers also working all day.
But we can all talk about it until we are blue in the face. It's not likely to happen until we get support from some respected Rabbanim. And the Rabbanim will not support it [right now] for various reasons as LOZ notes above (there are other reasons as well).
Mark
i mentioned woodmere above because it probably has one of the highest concentration of MO families in america. (i focus on MO because they would be more amenable to what i describe below.) they could have a public school whose student body would be overwhelmingly orthodox and whose day ended at a reasonable time to ensure that jewish studies (at a different location obviously) don't get short drift. kosher food. busing. the works.
now name me one woodmere rav who would get behind such a plan (or at least not actively campaign against it)
(perhaps a woodmere resident could comment on the rumors i'd heard that are the basis for this comment).
last comment: one reason rabbonim would never support hebrew charter schools is because public schools allow for much greater parent input that do our own schools. they will never cede that control.
So, Hebrew school, in other words. Cheder. Ma chadash?
Cheder. Right. And we see how well that worked for the heterodox movements, which depend on spillover from the Orthodox to provide an educated laity that can lein, lead davening, etc.
Or for the less-than-committed families, where the kids see the parents don't take Judaism seriously, so the cognitive dissonance between the school telling kids to observe halacha, and the home where it's clearly unimportant, turns the kids off of Judaism quite firmly. My brother-in-laws who went to Hebrew School are not interested in observance. My wife, who didn't, is a BT, who always felt a draw towards observance, if not towards her observant relatives.
As for religious charter schools, maybe in Massachusetts (there is at least one we know of in Boston) or New Jersey, but not in Woodmere, where New York's Blaine Amendment is in full force. Massachusetts has a modified Blaine amendment that allows for a religious institution which is completely under the public thumb.
How about afternoon charter schools? The school, paid for with public funds, will provide secular education from 12:30 to 5:00. Admission will be according the the regular charter school admission policy, but the school will be structured in a way that frum parents could, at least in theory, be on board with--dress code, Hebrew language offered as a foreign language, etc. Then a separate entity within the Jewish community can offer a morning Talmud Torah that students can pay to attend.
ProfK, you show a great understanding of the economics of the Jewish school system. The cost of educating a class of 20 children cannot be more than $10,000 ($200,000 per class includes a teacher $70,000 and assistant teacher $50,000 plus $80,000 of overhead/administration). Yet, full tuition costs $15,000 -- reflecting the scholarship cost that is forcefully paid by the full-tuition parents.
The 25% of full-tuition parents (percentage according to ProfK) will have to pay a larger share of the school's costs as a result of the current economic situation. For some of these people (those making a million dollars a year at law firms, investment banks or surgery), this should not be a problem. For the rest of us (those making $200,000 - $250,000), this is a model that does not work. (College costs $40,000-$50,000 a year and we need to save for this expense too.) The problem is that the school boards are usually filled with the richer types that do not understand our financial situation.
Of course the rabbis oppose afternoon programs. Have you met a pulpit rabbi that pays full tuition at a local yeshiva?
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