Helpful, this was not a chassidish community, but I know that this parent felt that the funding demands made on her were a “problem”. By paying full elementary school tuition, this parent was already subsidizing the education of other students, since in this school full tuition exceeds, by several thousand dollars, the actual cost of educating each child (her children did not require any special services, which the school did not offer in any case). She was able & willing to do this.
However, the school administrator told her that he expected her to work extra shifts so that she could donate thousands of dollars more to the school. As I mentioned above, this parent had many financial oblgations, including establishing her business & repaying educational loans. Her husband was a limudei kodesh teacher at a local high school, a worthwhile though not particularly well-paying profession. One-third to one-half of the elementary school’s student body paid no tuition at all, because their parents were in kollel or chinuch and were therefore exempt from tuition. This pediatrician was crticized by the school’s administration because she preferred to spend any time she could with her husband and young children, rather than work 12 hour emergency room shifts to pay other students’ tuition.
This approach definitely did not work “beautifully” for this school’s administrator, because the pediatrician decided to send her children to the older community school. Now, some fifteen years later, she is established in her career, and her children have graduated from the older school. Although she does donated some money to the newer school, she donates much more generously to the school which her children attended & graduated from.
My own experiences with this school (after I lost my job while pregnant & was unable to pay full tuition, my children were threatened with expulsion mid-year) were not positive either.
Mod 80, I am not sure what you mean by “the other side of the story”. I am sure that this administrator felt a lot of pressure due to the fact that a significant part of the student body paid no tuition. Objectively speaking, however, his approach was not the best way to build positive long-term relationships with parents.