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Part of the problem is that you lump all those things with being observant, but they aren’t really.
A Yeshiva education is a luxury. Homeschooling is very cheap and you can hire someone for a few hours a week to supplement what you can’t.
With rare exception, you don’t NEED meat and chicken. You can have a small piece l’kavod shabbos and that’s it.
You can live further out from the Jewish community as long as its walkable. Its not convenient and hard to live outside an eruv, but its doable.
The problem is frum Jews today want it all and haven’t figured out how they are going to pay for it. Instead they just rely on the rich Jews to cover the balance.
A Yeshiva education is a luxury. Homeschooling is very cheap and you can hire someone for a few hours a week to supplement what you can’t.
Most people are not equipped to homeschool, and if they were, they would have to quit their jobs and would be worse off financially.
With rare exception, you don’t NEED meat and chicken. You can have a small piece l’kavod shabbos and that’s it.
Let’s see you live that way first, then you can comment.
You’re being ridiculously unrealistic here.
m in israel – I don’t know if things have changed, but 15 years ago, I worked with a Catholic individual who sent his children to Catholic schools. He told me then that there was a tuition cap after 3 children. If tuition is 3500 per child, and you have 4 children, then most you pay is $10,500. But I think that only works for elementary schools because I have another former collegue who has a child in Catholic High School and the tuition for his son is in the $15K range. No tuition breaks (tried to qualify for either an academic and sports scholarship, but though the son had great grades, they weren’t high enough, and sports scholarships are even harder to come by).
Anyone want to lobby for tuition credits?
DY,
If you have 5 children in a school that costs $15,000 that’s $75,000 in AFTER TAX money. Assuming your spouse works, you are in the 28%+ tax bracket, that means you need to earn over $100,000 to pay just for Yeshiva. If you homeschool, chances are you will come out WAY ahead unless you are a high paid lawyer, businessman or doctor.
My husband and I have actually considered homeschooling because Yeshiva is so expensive.
My husband is also in danger of being laid off at the moment (his company announced layoffs but not specifics yet) and we have an austerity budget. It includes rice and beans and beans and rice for most meals.
Is it ideal to have to eat that way? No. But you can’t claim that its so expensive to be frum. Its very expensive to be frum and maintain an upper middle class lifestyle.
I agree with SJS.
I have two frum families homeschooling on my block. To say “most families can’t do it” IMHO is a cop out.
Additionally, its easy to say “it can’t be done”. In Europe it was done. If you are serious about your’s & your children’s yiddishkeit it can be done.
If you “don’t want to” and are willing to live off Tzedaka, then it can’t be done. That has become a more than acceptable outcome in the Jewish world.
So my answer to the OP is simply “no”. Live off others’ Tzedaka like everyone else.
And I forgot to add in my last post: 15 years ago, my tuition bill was about $3500 per/child. The Catholic School tuition was about $800 per child.
Schools are expensive. Chicken and meat are too. Dairy products and other products are cheap if you get the in stores like Shop Rite and Pathmark. My wife used to keep chalov yisroel, but she was mvater neder because of the expense. Cholov Yisroel yogurts were $1 to $1.25 and milk is around $2 half a gallon. Now, a gallon of milk is $2.50 and crunch yogurts is .50. My grocery bills cut in half!
It’s like this topic is the elephant in the room that no one has the courage to say what needs to be said.
All this system is doing is turning children (especially teens) away from a religious lifestyle.
I cant imagine any teen wants to see their parents stressed out to the point of breaking over yet another year of tuition with no means paying it. As a child and teen I never saw my parents get stressed or broken over anything else, except tuition.
What teen in their right mind would look at this situation and be excited to say “wow, i cant wait to have a religious family of my own”
Bigger than the shidduch crisis this is a problem that needs to be fixed now!! Not just because of the practical issues of finance, but for the haskafic and chinuch issues that will destroy the community a generation from now.
You all aint seen nothing yet, if you dont have married kids!
See this:
This is after killing yourself to marry them off, it gets MORE complicated!
I have two frum families homeschooling on my block. To say “most families can’t do it” IMHO is a cop out.
It’s not a cop-out. It’s true. Saying it’s a cop-out is to claim that most parents could really be good teachers, but they nevertheless chose a different career, which is occasionally, but not usually the case, and to say otherwise, besides being IMHO untrue, is an insult to our rebbeim, moros, and teachers.
And those choosing to homeschool, in many communities, are not doing anyone a favor; their limited tuition is still something that the schools could have benefited from.
And the numbers given by SJS and zahavasdad, IME, are overinflated; most parents, in the schools I’m familiar with, are not paying nearly that much in tuition (either they are paying less than full, or tuition is not that much to begin with).
DY,
The schools near me cost around $15,000 or more per kid.
But lets use Lakewood values – around $5,000. Average family size is what, 8? That’s $40,000 in tuition, after tax. You are probably in the 25% tax bracket at that point so $53,000 salary. Are you telling me in Lakewood the average 2nd salary is $53,000? I find that doubtful.
As to incremental costs – that’s true if you are talking about 1 child. If a family can afford to put 3 kids in the local Yeshiva, but have 6 kids or they have a 7th, the family cannot pay more for the 7th child at all. At a certain point, there needs to be an additional class to host the increasing population.
Yes, I believe many parents have the ability to homeschool their kids. I think most don’t want to, so they choose to live off of tzedaka instead.
clever, Bigger than the shidduch crisis this is a problem that needs to be fixed now!! Not just because of the practical issues of finance, but for the haskafic and chinuch issues that will destroy the community a generation from now.
And how do you suggest we fix this issue?
thank you, i was begining to think that there was a cr policy to ignore me.
Personally I can tell you that I’m not even considering spending that money on a religious education. I would rather send them to a good non parochial private school and private tutors for lemudi kodesh.
A postive religious home enviroment where mom and dad arent fretting over every cent due to a tuition bill but yidishkite is central to everything can do a lot more then a home filled with pain and strife where children are warehoused and sleepwalked through a jewish education.
I’m not trying to be disrespectful to the people that are moser nefesh and sacrifice to provide a jewish education to their kids, I just have a different take on it.
I’m with truth be told on this one. Being frum can never be “too expensive”, even if it costs us our lives.
To those upset about the cost of tuition, do you have any ideas on how to make it cheaper?
An idea to cut cost would be to asses the real cost of operating a school.
When parents apply to a school they are given a number as to how much it is per child. That number; based on circumstances is usually flexible. The number is a wishful thinking on the part of the administration as it does not reflect the “real” operating cost of the school. It’s there so when they have someone with the means to pay it, it helps make up for some of the people they need to give breaks to.
If the real operating cost were to be disclosed, then maybe each community could get their businesses involved and work towards contributing and discounting the cost of tuition.
Our people have had an amazing track record in making businesses profitable and products affordable (other then Kosher food) maybe it’s time to use some of that cunning and seichel towards this issue.
Yes that is correct, being frum is worth costing you your life,
The problem is your children wont see it that way when they see the downside to it.
It’s similar to the problem in the 30’s and 40’s where men were losing their jobs every week and all they heard around the shabbous table was “It is so hard to be a Jew in America”
cleverjewishpun:
I’m not denying that there is a problem, I’m just saying I don’t like the working of the question “is it getting too expensive to be frum”.
“If the real operating cost were to be disclosed, then maybe each community could get their businesses involved and work towards contributing and discounting the cost of tuition.”
Why do you think disclosing the “real” operating costs (I’m not sure that they’re quite as secret as you make them sound) would get more businesses involved?
If each community knew how much it took to operate each school then it would accomplish two things, 1: parents would be able to see where the money is going and maybe sway people to cut some luxuries out of the budget. 2: Donors and people with business could get together and say “ok so for the school to run it needs $5000 per child, Charge the parents 3000 and we can make up the difference”
clever,Charge the parents 3000 and we can make up the difference”
How many frum-sympathetic corporations can offer $2,000 per child????
Gimme a break (pardon the pun)!
@Ofcourse; I’m not talking corporations I’m talking about the usual ba’alei tzedakah and people who own lucrative businesses
The figures arent exact but the key is finding out how much everything “really” costs
From there the problem becomes a little easier to solve
SJS,
If we’re discussing a family with eight kids, they will most likely not be close in age, and there’s just not enough time in the day to teach them. As far as your point regarding incremental costs and adding classes, that’s why i said depending on the community, meaning if the classes aren’t already all filled to capacity.
“The price of Kosher food (Meat, cheese especially) and even more if you want Hemish brands. Chalav Yisroel can be quite expensive especially Non Milk (ie Ice cream, butter etc)”
Buy your baked goods at Stop and Shop. If you are Ashkenazic, eat non-glatt meat. Eat Cabot cheese and Breakstone butter rather than the “heimish” brands. The prices will stay high as long as people are willing to pay them. The OU is a perfectly acceptable hechsher!
“Kosher food prices will continue to rise when each product or resturant needs 4 different hechsharim just to appeal to enough customers to keep them from going under. “
I have a container of spice that has five hechshers — and according to some opinions, plain spice doesn’t require rabbinical supervision at all. Don’t buy the 5 hechsher spice; get the store brand with at most one hechsher.
“Cut the Sem in Israel. Cut the Sem in Israel. Cut the Sem in Israel. Cut the Sem in Israel. Cut the Sem in Israel. “
Got it!!!
“The money is going somewhere.”
Salaries for administrators in Jewish Day Schools are much higher than public schools. I am aware of one Day School that pays its principal over $400K/year. The most that a public school principal can make in NYC is about $153K — and that is with an earned doctorate and over 20 years experience.
I doubt that is the entirety of the problem though. Most Jewish schools are quite small. I was told this evening of one very well known high school with a graduating class of 70. I know of another with a graduating class of 100. By comparison, there is a public high school near me with a graduating class of over one thousand. The economies of scale are enormous.
“the Catholic schools charge $3500 a year tutiton and the Yeshivas can charge $15K (or more)”
The Catholic Church would never allow a school with 70 students per grade to continue operating. It would be forced to merge.
“Nobody can say for sure if the Bais Yaakov is running a surplus or a deficit since the President of BYBP is not opening the books for people to see.”
Don’t ever give money to a charity that won’t open its books.
“Anyone want to lobby for tuition credits? “
Sure! We would have to do two things:
(1) Repeal New York’s Blaine Amendment, which prohibits religious schools from getting any form of governmental assistance other than transportation. An attempt was made back in 1967; it got less than 30% of the vote in a statewide referendum.
(2) Campaign for the higher taxes that will be needed to pay for the religious school tuition.
charliehall — “The Catholic Church would never allow a school with 70 students per grade to continue operating. It would be forced to merge.”
This is not accurate. Even with the recent closures and mergers, the 9 Catholic elementary schools in Queens that I am personally familiar with all have only one or two classes per grade, with no more than 25 students per class — i.e. less than 50 students per grade. The high schools are significantly larger (and also have much more expensive tuition), but many still do not have more than 3 parallel classes per grade.
Your overall point about the economies of scale, however is a great point, and in my opinion a big part of the “tuition crisis”. As long as parents want schools that fit exactly the niche they are looking for, and we therefore have multiple tiny schools rather than a few larger ones, we are dealing with an innately inefficient model, however responsible and efficient administrators try to be. Additionally smaller schools generally do not have the budget for a specific staff member to oversea the finances, and often tend to be more laid back in their calculations.
However than is not really applicable to the one school mentioned previously in this thread. BYBP is one of the largest Bais Yaakov’s in the world (I think that the only larger ones are in Yerushalayim.) So whatever there financial issues are, it’s not too small a school!
cleverjewishpun “It’s similar to the problem in the 30’s and 40’s where men were losing their jobs every week and all they heard around the shabbous table was “It is so hard to be a Jew in America””
Absolutely — and R’ Moshe, tz”l is famous for saying that this complaining was big part of the reason that so many children of that generation left Yiddishkeit. But does that mean they should have worked on Shabbos? I always understood R’ Moshe’s point as we should be careful to present to our children the beauty and value of the sacrifices we are making happily for the sake of Torah.
The “tuition crisis” is not new. Hillel Hazaken had some trouble paying tuition, and almost lost his life as a result! There are numerous stories in Europe of extremely poor families who were moser nefesh to pay the melamed and ended up with sons who were great tzadikim. (Off hand I don’t remember the names, but I recall one story were the family sold the bricks of their fireplace, going without heat all winter so as to pay the melamed, and another where the mother gave up money she had been saving for years intending to buy herself a new dress.) The message that those kids got was that Torah learning is so important to us it is worth more than almost anything else in the world. Is that he message are children are hearing when we complain about tuition? I’m not saying we don’t need solutions — we most certainly do! But in the meantime, it is very possible for parents to communicate a different message rather than “I’m stressed out and broken down because of tuition”
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