By Steven Starr
I applaud Rabbi Wieder, Moshe Kinderlehrer, Shmuel Shayowitz and Doug Dubitsky for their June 6 panel regarding the economic pressures facing the Orthodox community (“Rabbi Jeremy Wieder Offers Plan to Secure Day School Community’s Financial Future,” June 6, 2023). The financial sustainability of Modern Orthodoxy in North America is a critically important issue, perhaps the most important issue facing our community, and all efforts to thoughtfully engage on this topic should be encouraged.
That being said, I respectfully disagree with Rabbi Wieder’s view (as summarized in the article) that a community-based funding model for our day schools is the only correct approach to the problem of high yeshiva tuition and that no other approach is going to work. The high cost of yeshiva tuition is a complex problem. Suggesting that a single silver bullet will solve it is a faulty approach, similar to suggesting that the only way to solve poverty is by building more soup kitchens.
Further, a community-based funding model, while perhaps correct from a Torah perspective, is highly unlikely to be successful in the United States. Unlike in the times of the Talmud (and to a lesser extent, the pre-Enlightenment Jewish Diaspora), Jewish communities in America are not self-governing in almost any sense of the word. Unlike historical Jewish communities, modern American Jewish communities cannot levy taxes or assess fines and certainly cannot administer physical punishment. Given this state of affairs, what, pray, would drive the levels of compliance necessary to enable the broad-based funding approach advocated by Rabbi Wieder? Rather, this “solution” would likely fall victim to the “tragedy of the commons,” i.e., by making this everyone’s problem it would become nobody’s problem, and nothing would actually be accomplished.
Instead, I suggest that we tackle tuition affordability in our community through the following four strategies:
- Focused and Effective Advocacy For State and Federal Funding For Yeshiva Day Schools
As most readers of this paper know, families in Florida now receive approximately $8,000 per student per year regardless of income for their children enrolled in yeshiva day schools. Our own very effective TeachNJ is currently engaged in heroic efforts to replicate this success in New Jersey. A state subsidy of that size would be a transformative change in the day school funding structure.
- Personal Financial Education
A number of the panelists at Rabbi Wieder’s presentation emphasized the need for financial education in our community. Education of this kind should include topics such as creating a budget and sticking to it, choosing a career, important financial decisions like buying a house or car, saving for college and retirement, minimizing one’s tax burden, etc. The more financially savvy our day school parents are, the better able they will be to afford yeshiva tuition. Project Ezrah already provides some programming of this nature; the goal should be for every member of our community to receive instruction of this kind at multiple points in their financial lives, ideally starting when they are students in our schools.
- Providing Financial and Budgeting Guidance to School Administrators
Being a school administrator is a difficult job because it involves balancing the role of a CEO focused on the fiscal well-being of the institution with the role of an educator focused on the educational, spiritual and physical needs of students. While many of our administrators ably balance these two roles, there is certainly room for our community to provide training to administrators to help them optimize the financial bottom line of our day schools. Day schools that follow sound financial policies will use their resources more efficiently and will be able to stretch their cash farther, thereby keeping tuition payments lower.
- Renewed Emphasis on Day School Fundraising
While I disagree with Rabbi Wieder about the practicality of a mandatory or semi-mandatory communal tax to support schooling, schools can and should go out to the broader community to actively fundraise. In the avalanche of urgent and pressing issues and tasks confronting our school administrators, fundraising from the broader community sometimes falls by the wayside. This must be avoided. Our schools should all have an active and robust fundraising strategy and continually pursue voluntary donations from the broader community.
These are four potential strategies for addressing tuition affordability; I am sure there are more. It is counterproductive to suggest that there is a single solution to tuition affordability because it is a complex problem that requires a multifaceted solution. In addition, it is difficult to tell which strategies will work without actually trying them.
In sum, I am grateful to Rabbi Wieder and the Jewish Link for drawing our attention to this important issue, and I hope that this panel is the start of a continuing discussion that leads to a wide net of novel strategies for bringing tuition relief to our families.
Steven Starr lives in Hillside with his wife Keshet and his children Ellie, Moshe, Meira and Rina. He can be reached at [email protected].
