freezer for morahs

yeshivabochur123 – It is unfair to the girls, who have such a hard time as is, to disallow them from getting married. So I have a better suggestion:

No hiring unmarried girls as Morahs.

Syag – hilarious. I especially liked the bit about having no money. My grandson’s daughter just took one of them teaching posts and she is earning less than what I made as an apprentice during the Great Depression, no adjustment for inflation. Financially the difference for those girls between working and not working is roughly a cup of coffee. Which may have something to do with their lack of committment. But it is definitely why the school likes hiring them.

Fascinating topic, and an important issue. I haven’t yet decided whether to take a humorous, serious, or sarcastic approach.

okay bachur, you started off making a good point and now you are just being ridiculous. There is a world of difference between taking off for 4 weeks, and leaving.

Squeak – you said it! but the married women here don’t make much either.

elbendi – that is close to the dumbest thing i ever heard. if your commitment to chinuch habanim is tied to how big your paycheck is then keep the heck away from my kids! A good teacher or rebbe NEEDs and DESERVES the pay, but they wouldn’t dare treat their responsibility to the children as you describe.

I worked in a school where they had no money for three full payperiods and you know what? People were angry, they made demands, but NOT ONE of those teachers even considered turning their backs on their students – why? because of their COMMITTMENT to them. I am not advocating for that, i am telling you what a REAL teacher does.

and if you take on a job that doesn’t have enough pay to make you committed, and you know that full well in advance, and you chose to use that as an excuse not to behave with commitment in return, than you are a fraud.

so nice to see how people view the job of educating our kids. Any good rebbes/teachers out there want to help me bop these guys in the nose?

maternity leave is four weeks in some places.

and yes it wreaks havoc with some years but there are limits to what can be asked of/expected from women.

as far as your next point, you’re playing the word twisting game again.

I said: If they cannot commit to a year of teaching, they have no business teaching!

you decided it translates to:”If you look at getting married as selfish…”

and

“call a woman who wants to get married uncommitted to the other responsibilities in her life.”

and

“disallowing teachers from getting married “

there is zero correlation. be committed to dating and getting married, it is the ratzon of Hashem, but DO NOT start a school year if you don’t think you can find a way to finish it, it is a tremendous lack of commitment. There are girls who have found a way to finish the year, there are girls who were honest enough to understand that they should take on a different role if they couldn’t commit to the year. those girls will be real, quality teachers.

and i hate to break it to you – that pool of good teachers will be just fine without teachers like that.

Syag – why would the married women make more? They are easily replaced by a sem grad. The same would be a problem for Rabbeim if the oilem had not taken active steps to ensure living wages were paid.

squeak – true, true. We do have a school here (maybe two) that had a policy that any single girl who wanted a job had to sign that she was committed to finishing the year. The girls had a choice, never did anyone think it was a request not to date or get married. It was a request to be committed to the children in your charge. take it or leave it, in august. We should have more of that but too many people in the other schools seem to believe that committing to the year means we don’t want them dating.

hey squeak – if they offer them more money, how will that suddenly free up the boy who they were moving for?

If the hiring pool is closed off to such girls, say in a legal way such as requiring them to sign a contract to finish the year or pay penalties, the supply of applicants goes down. Wages go up to retain the committed teachers, since they are no longer threatened by girls just looking for a parking spot.

Syag, you also said:

me: I said that if you are more worried about yourself than the class of girls you are teaching…

and:

it’s all about shidduchim. to heck with the kids…

It’s a matter of priorities. I don’t think you’d say the same thing if a teacher wouldn’t commit to stay on even if a family member became ill ch”v and she had to take care of her/him.

Because I think marriage is a high priority, I don’t think a girl is in any way unqualified if she teaches and dates, even if the result would be leaving.

Squeak, if the finances weren’t an issue, I’d agree with you in theory. Another point to consider, though: if they didn’t hire single teachers, those young women would find other jobs, and there would be a smaller pool of married women available to teach.

Finances are not the issue. A mature experienced teacher does not need 2 assistants and 1/3 of an administrator. You get a higher student to teacher ratio but one that is manageable by more capable staff.

You do realize that the only reason BMG can enforce the freezer clause is because the guys are getting ready and going on dates during the time he would be normally be learning in yeshiva. The Morah is dating on her own time. Even if the Morah’s contract had a no marring clause, it would be unenforceable both in secular and Jewish court. Most of these girls don’t have any assets nor are they being paid great salaries so you can’t fine them and as far as using the school as a reference, I doubt she will use them.

You also realize that the pay is only $1-2 thousand a month for 10 months. If you want the Morah to wait until after the school yearto get married you will need to bribe them . For example offer to pay for the wedding if she gets married after the school year. ( A small wedding can cost over $10,000 and up , which is almost the annual Morah’s salary) Another alternative, is to have a spare apartment which the newlyweds can live in for free until the end of the school year.

Even if the Morah signed the contract, if she gets engaged she should tell her employer. If they fire her and hold back pay she can sue them in civil court and/or go to Dept of Labor and get unemployment assuming she worked more than three months on the books. The Dept. of Labor will get her any back pay held by an employer. If she goes to a Jewish court the yeshiva may be forced to pay her for lost wages for the period of time from the date fired until the wedding and any back pay they withheld.

DY do you think it’s feasible for a girl to do something other than teach?

I would bet you these girls never even entertained the thought that you need to finish the year.

and i would put money on it.

do you know why? because nobody is teaching them the value of teaching. nobody is teaching them the damage it can do to the kids. nobody is teaching them that teaching children is an unbelievably important priority. priority. They are not being told that. they are being told that when you come home from seminary you teach til you get married. marriage is THE priority. just teach til it happens. What kind of a teacher is that?

you keep arguing that if i say you can’t leave in the middle, it means you shouldn’t get married. Besides the fact that i never said that, why in the world do you insist that these children should have a lichatchila that is harmful to them? why cant the girl place finishing the year among her priorities? And why in the world cant she just do something else. You say a lot about my seeming lack of priority for marriage, you seem to be very strong in your lack of priority for both education and children.

I am sorry, not having a place to learn is one thing, not having a productive zman does not automatically come before chinuch habanim.

I did not mean you specifically, let’s please not make this personal. I’m just trying to frame this in terms of prioritizing, rather than dismissing something as unimportant.

I do think she should make a strong effort to finish the year, but don’t think that should or could be an iron clad commitment.

As far as how much his learning needs to suffer for her achrayus to her students, I think that needs to be decided on a case by case basis.

She is entitled to chose to teach, she is entitled to get married, and at that point, it is not only her decision to make.

I think it’s simple demographics. We are b”H growing, so we need more and more teachers, so perforce, we need some inexperienced ones.

If, as you say, those who won’t commit to stay the whole year no matter what shouldn’t teach, they will obviously begin other careers, and that will deplete the supply of teachers. I don’t think forcing them to commit (contractually or morally) benefits klal Yisroel.

those who are real teachers, will commit even if they get married. whether or not it works out is in Hashem’s hands but they will commit.

(there is nothing wrong with an inexperienced teacher, there is a lot wrong with a girl who is teaching because she has nothing else to do til she gets married.)

as far as starting a career? really? these girls can get jobs as reading tutors, floating subs, permanent subs, office work, secretarial work – all within the same school building without it interfering with a class if she leaves.

Teaching girls priorities and a sense of commitment would be wonderful for klal yisroel. certainly better than what they are learning right now…

but not without considering staying as a top priority.

the kind of teachers i am looking for for my children will be doing both.

re read every one of my posts. you said marriage is the priority, i said both. every time.

It appears that on one hand you want the Morah to be committed to work a full school year. On the other hand they are hardly paying them anything and there is no incentive to stay.

Let’s face it no Morah no matter how dedicated she is, is not going to turn down a shidduch just so she can finish the school year.

Let’s say there is have a no marrying clause in the Morah’s contract and she finds a boy and gets engaged. The most the Yeshiva can do is fire her and possibly hold back two weeks pay or about $500 – 1,000 gross or $350- $700 net. The Morah has nothing to lose and goes on unemployment and tells them (Dept of Labor) that her employer held back her last check. They will get her, her back pay and the yeshiva will have to hire her back. The Morah is not interested in the job and the Yeshiva will now have to prove that the Morah’s not interested or face fines.

In fact the firing of the Morah maybe in the best interests of the Morah. This way she collects unemployment while planning her wedding . It also doesn’t solve the problem as the yeshiva needs to find a replacement anyway. All it does is increase the unemployment premiums that they have to pay.

A better solution is for the yeshiva to promise at least subsidized housing if she finishes the year. This together with help in finding a kollel for the groom will help the yeshiva retain qualified teachers.

DY – we rarely agree but sometimes the subject of the disagreement surprises me as this one does. Did you really say that there would be a shortage of teachers if there was a policy not to hire every years’ new seminary crop? Just about every frum woman is either employed by or would love to be employed by a school. I find it hard to believe that mothers would suddenly stop seeing school jobs as convenient simply because of a policy not to hire single girls… au contraire, oversupply would still be a problem.

Your later post to Syag seemed to clarify tbat you meant they would start other careers, but that is laughable. These are not ambitious girls. These are girls who shun college and corporate environments for ideological reasons. What career opportunities do they have other than babysitting and worki g for a school?

With Universal pre-k the state of New York is paying for all students provided that there is limited religious instruction .

If the yeshivas don’t hire the seminary girls they will be hired by the universal pre-k providers. Who will the parent want a middle aged tired teacher who can’t keep up with the toddlers or the teenage teacher who is full of vim & vigor. Some of these pre-k may decide to start a first grade and then a second and since they are the only ones hiring the seminary girls the yeshivas can’t compete and before you know it what started as a pre-k is a full fledged yeshiva.

Supply and demand dictates that the fewer applicants the higher the salary. Likewise once a larger number of girls go into different fields such as programming, medical billing etc… it will open new fields for the middle aged woman and there will be fewer candidates for these morah jobs.