Reply To: Working parent letter: two implementable ideas I posted

To some above posters who say that that schools do so much already or that we have no right to complain. Again we must help each other. The current system is broke the more chances a school gives a parent to pay tuition on time and as high a rate possible for the given parent the better it is for everyone involved.

Yes we have a Mitzva to teach our children and the actual chiyuv is on the parent but what would you suggest? A bunch of poor Jewish families because parents can’t work? Aside from the fact that even the best parent cannot always teach their kids, especially as they age.

We must assert more of a communal responsibility over our schools. Schools have generally speaking made poor progress in combating tuition issues and just simply kept raising tuition.

Disclaimer: What I am writing I am happy to provide to my Yeshivas and its teachers and am just trying to illustrate a point and have immeasurable Hakoras tov despite paying for my children to go to Yeshiva.

Do we hold fundraisers for the electric company? Do we have our kids run and collect tzedaka for the gas company?Do we pay for our mailman’s life insurance policy? Do we give holiday bonuses or have special loan funds for our sanitation dept.? Do we pay for building funds and dinner campaigns for the police department?Donate almost all our discretionary income to the fire dept.? And for many who cannot provide monetarily,then so much of their free time to any other entity that serves our public good?

Our schools are communal Tzedakas and for to long we have not been organized enough to oversee how best we can help them and they help us.

Ironically I have found posters who keep on defending schools, view it as a struggling business or a provider of service to the public yet have no concrete suggestions how they themselves can help that struggling business other then saying charge the customers more or that schools can charge because they provide a service.Even the MTA this past year was famously denied a fare hike as it was considered to much of a public burden.You can’t just keep on raising rates.

As a humorous aside for all those saying school is like a babysitting service and for those against:

It would be beneficial if it was. Group babysitting is usually an average of five dollars an hour AND you only pay for use.

If school is 9-5 four days and current three hours on fridays then a full week is $175, boy schools approx $200 per week, pre-k around $160 per week. If a full month were in fact existent then you would max out between 640-800 per month.Our schools charge significantly more then this.