Reply To: Community support for Jewish education

zahavasdad, in communal schools, they usually accept a lot more responsibility anyway even for “problem” children, as there aren’t too many other options. Even if they feel a kid needs a different school, they will usually work with the parents towards getting them into the school.

GAW: Why would they have to pay more than their children? They just need to pay the shul membership.

Let’s take an out-of-town Modern Orthodox community. They may have one shul, and one school system. Let’s say shul membership is $1,500 per family now, and tuition averages $15,000 per kid. Those are somewhat typical numbers for a MO area. Let’s also say the shul has 150 families who are members, and 75 of the families have children in the school system.

Let’s say you raise the shul dues to $7,000 per year. Now you can take the extra money and put it into the tuition “pot” beforehand, and lower the tuition costs per student by that amount – provided that the students’ families are members of the shul! You’re not kicking people out, you’re just making some of the responsibility a communal one. Additionally, since shul dues are very often tax deductible, it would also amount to a savings for many parents of students. If someone can’t afford the shul dues, you can work with them to find out how much they can pay. I know that my shul does that already anyways with some people.