2009 May « Rejewvenate!

Fake Solutions to our Tuition Crisis (pt 1)

May 10, 2009 at 12:50 am | In education, orthodox | 2 Comments

The OU has put out a self-serving bit of hogwash trumpeting its vaporous initiative to fix the tuition crisis plaguing the Orthodox community.

In brief, th OU presents a two-prong approach. The first is a cost-cutting and revenue-enhancing strategy for the near term. The cost-cutting elements are saving money by joining together with schools and other groups to obtain insurance as part of a large pool and taking advantage of energy efficient technologies to save more money. The revenue-enhancement comes through hiring grant-writers, encouraging people to use the OU internet toolbar, and setting up ‘Kehilla Funds’ whereby all members of the community donate money towards supporting the schools, even those members who don’t have children.
Let’s look at each aspect of this laughable proposal. Let’s say that the insurance savings are $100k per school, and the energy savings are another $100k – both well above estimate. The cost-cutting measures, estimated high, in a school of 500 students, lead to a savings of $400 per student, assuming all the savings go directly to lowering tuition, and average tuition, per the post, is $15k, you’ve now lowered tuition by a whopping 2.67%. Wow, that’s totally a “radical impact in terms of savings.” What nonsense.

As for the revenue-enhancing meaures, grant-writing is great, but if Jewish philanthropy in general is suffering, I don’t see how it helps that much. It’s just more organizations competing for a shrinking pool of money. To put things in perspective, every $500,000 raised can reduce tuition no more than $1,000, assuming 500 students per school. Even if every school raised another $500k through grants, we’d still have an enormous problem, and there’s no reason to believe that there’s $500k per school available to be raised, no matter how many grant-writers you hire.

As to the OU toolbar, that’s the biggest scam of all. Yes, a small handful of very broad-based organizations have used them successfully. Our community isn’t going to benefit that much, since we’re just not big enough. Moreover, it seems like the OU will suddenly become a grant-making org, channeling whatever money is raised to whichever school it likes. No details are provided about how the OU intends to make those decisions. And anyone who believes that you can make those kinds of funding decisions without spending quite a bit of money to create and support that decision-making apparatus doesn’t know anything about economics, or about philanthropy. This is nothing other than a thinly-disguised effort by the OU to squat on a source of revenue.

The last idea, of Kehilla Funds, doesn’t hold up either. In the Jewish world, the number of families with kids in school easily dwarfs those without. Those with kids are already paying, so know we’re dealing with just those without kids. Let’s say that out of 1000 Jewish families in a neighborhood there are 250 with no kids in school. Let’s say they all give the $360/year that the OU proposes = $90,000. Let’s say that the remaining 750 families average three kids in school at $15k/child. That’s a total tuition cost of over $33 million! The $90k we just raised into the ‘Kehilla’ fund doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.

Tomorrow we’ll look at part 2, in which the OU tries to take credit for a grassroots community initiative. Stay tuned.

Harrisburg Synagogue Burns

May 5, 2009 at 9:43 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

I learned today of some very sad news. Chisuk Emuna, one of the last traditional (non-egalitarian) Conservative synagogues in the country, experienced a terrible fire that destroyed their sanctuary, burned many of their siddurim and otehr seforim, and damaged their eleven Torahs, some very badly, perhaps even beyond repair. Total damages were estimated at $1 million, but thankfully, nobody was hurt in the blaze.

The matter strikes at the heart for me, because I was a community educator at Chisuk Emuna for two years. My wife and I would drive down to Harrisburg, where I would read Torah, lead davening, and teach classes. Each Shabbat, another warmhearted family would open their home and heart to us, and we would magically become a part of the fabric of this unique community. To Rabbi Muroff and all the lovely people we met, our hearts go out to you. To all my friends and family reading this, please join me in supporting the rebuilding campaign. You can learn more at http://chisukemuna.blogspot.com/, and watch the video slideshow below.

Changes Coming in Orthodox Education Options?

May 2, 2009 at 9:02 pm | In economics, education, israel, orthodox | Leave a Comment

An interesting article in the Jewish Standard suggests that parents are ready to explore new options for what a Modern Orthodox school could look like. As the tuition crisis overshadows the shidduch crisis, I’m finding myself more and more irritated by the total lack of vision and perspective displayed by both parents and leadership.

I attended Netiv Meir, a premiere yeshiva high school in Jerusalem, where most students dormed. The school was widely acknowledged as perhaps the best religious high schools, and one of the best high schools, period, in Israel.

Let me tell you a bit about my school. Our day began with davening at 7 am, and we finished our last class at about 6pm. Following davening and dinner we had night seder and study hall. We didn’t free up until 9pm Sunday through Thursday. Fridays were a half-day, and we stayed in every other Shabbat too. The school had about 500 students in four grades, and served three meals a day and maintained four dormitory buildings.

The key difference between this excellent school and American MO schools was the student-to-teacher ratio, and the approach to extracurriculars. In Netiv Meir, there were forty students to a class. That’s right, forty. In the article above, they talk about going from an 18:1 ratio at the expensive schools to a 25:1 ratio at a proposed cheaper school. Yet my school achieved academic excellence with a 40:1 ratio.

As for extracurriculars, there basically weren’t any. There were no athletic teams or choirs or anything of the sort. Anyway, who had the time? We spent as many as six hours a day learning Torah. Night seder was the extracurricular activity! Physical education was not neglected by any means – this school was training future soldiers in the IDF, and our gym classes involved reaching certain requirements for distance running, pushups, situps, and pullups.

We played sports in our free time, but not in organized leagues. There were no debate teams, but we did study three languages (Hebrew, English and Arabic – and Aramaic, I suppose), and everyone learned biology, chemisty, physics, algebra, geomety, trigonometry and calculus. We learned computer programming (on old computers perhaps, but we gained real knowledge), history, Tanach, literature and so on.

No class had a teacher’s aid. Most classes didn’t use fancy textbooks. Yet the graduates of this school knew more math, science, and Torah in 10th grade than any graduate of the MO instutions in New York like HAFTR, DRS, Flatbush, Ramaz, TABC, Frisch, and SAR.

We need to recalibrate our expectations and our sense of what is possible if we are going to create an exceptional and sustainable edcuational model for our communities. We need to questions orthodoxies like the idea that student-to-teacher ratios are critical, or that extracurriculars are required if our children arte going to get into good colleges, or that it’s ok for our kids to graduate high school without being fluent in Hebrew, and without being capable of learning a daf of Gemara on their own. We might also do well to acknowledge that day care, school, and summer camp are all related to the same need to educate our kids, socialize them, and free Mom and Dad to earn a living and maintain a household.

I’ve written a bit about possible alternative models for Jewish education on this blog. I fear I might not have been bold enough myself in proposing solutions but perhaps I was succesful in laying out some tradeoffs. What other fresh ideas are out there?