Are Yeshivas Charging Too Much? 🕍🕍🔌🔌⚡⚡📲

Perhaps the title of this thread is not reflective of the OP’s real question. I gather the OP means to ask, “How can we manage to tuition if we are not on a substantial income?” A corollary to that question is how to cope with the heavy and pressing demands of the yeshivas. But the question is not the same. The title implies that yeshivos charge too much. I am not the field of school administration, and I also doubt that any two schools will have very different profiles that would result in very different tuition scales.

When I am short on money, everyone else appears to be rich. And when they ask me for anything, I judge it to be greed. No, that is not okay. But that is human nature, one of those midos we need to overcome.

The real issue is that yeshivos have tended to use parents and their tuition obligations as an area of leverage. These yeshivos exist on a spine of donations, and many have a welcoming hand for government funding. They create budgets that include tuition, and this is the only piece where they can exert force. Yes, if the balance is outstanding, your child will be denied entry or admission. Nice, no. Menchlich? Of course not. Is this compatible with their stated mission of providing as much chinuch of the highest quality to as many talmidim as possible? No. But yeshivos are business as much as a professional, a grocery store, and any other private enterprise. And they can use this leverage because, well, because they can.

Ideally, there would be a huge measure of tolerance to give a break to those parents who experience financial struggles. Again, midos we wish existed. Maybe some yeshivos do behave this way. Some food stores and take outs do function this way, and these are praiseworthy. But the average store does not allow poor people to shoplift, and the average yeshiva does not tolerate those who do not pay tuition. Again, what is fair? My opinion won’t matter much.

My advice, focus on what you do have, and do your best at living up to your responsibility to provide chinuch to your children. It is not your business or mine that other parents take vacations or have nice cars.

TLIK, I don’t know which circles you are part of, but the average yeshivos and beis yaakovs do not refuse children from returning to school due to parental outstanding tuition obligations. Many, at most, won’t send the parents the graduation certificate, but otherwise the children themselves won’t know about the outstanding balance or any consequence thereof.

I wont comment if they are charging too much, but people are paying too much. Meaning the Schools have expenses to be paid, but that doesnt mean all parents can pay the money.

If you dont have money for food, you buy cheaper food or buy less food, no such option really exists if you cannot afford yeshiva tutition

Are you suggesting that the only school in town draw a hard line and “not accommodate” local Jewish children whose parent is, say, unemployed or under-employed and simply cannot pay the minimum tuition no matter how hard you squeeze them since the money simply doesn’t exist, thus forcing the frum yiddishe kinder of those mishpachas to the local non-Jewish public school to grow up with daily nivel peh, retzicha, giluy aroyos, drugs, crime and avoda zora so that they eventually become frei themselves?

To CT Lawyer:
Last week, in one of his first formal actions after being confirmed as Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue announced he was cancelling a bunch of Obama rules governing school lunch programs and would allow foods with higher sodium, less whole grain and no longer require a Badatz hashgacha for school cafeterias. Perhaps if you wait a few weeks, the school can “bring back Bubbe” to run the lunch program.

You mean that until Obama became president higher sodium and less whole grain was okay? And Nanny Obama saved our children’s health?

Where does the NYS Condition have an ERA?

Article 1 Section 11 (Equal Protection of laws) was amended in 2001 to add the words ‘or her’ to his in apply rights and protection from discrimination.

Okay, I remember that. But that isn’t an ERA and that was merely a cosmetic change that changed nothing legally from a practical point since women were already considered covered even without “her”.

@kotlorism the only way you could possibly know that is if you are an administrator of a yeshiva/Bais yakov in Lakewood. But based on your short posting history on ywn I am willing to bet you are not.

I am even willing to have “Working class family” Yeshivas for those that are Middle to Lower class families. THen the more well to do schools can even have trips to Israel and Switzerland.

But their tuition won’t be helping keep the cost of the working families’ tuition down.

They’ll get an excellent chinuch at those yeshivos. But perhaps they won’t become bokis in non-Jewish subjects like history, science and geography.

Wrong you are……………
NOT a cosmetic change, but an AMENDMENT extending equal rights to women. No need to write an additional amendment when amended existing language confers equal rights on women,

An amendment is a change to the document. Some states require a new section,others such as Ny allow changes to language.

BenK…Let me put responses to your questions/statements/plight together in a cohesive answer<

There is no such thing as a FREE lunch. Schools not charging students for lunch receive some USDA surplus food at no charge to use in making the meals, BUT the school (if private) or school system and taxpayers pay the rest of cost of cooking and serving those lunches. Ingredients, labor, equipment, utilities.

Yeshivos and Day Schools cannot allow students to bring lunch from home (imagine the politics and insults in allowing food from one house and not another). It may be cheaper to use an outside vendor (caterer) than to make lunch in the school (economy of scale). Would it make you feel better if the annual school fee was $500 higher instead of seeing a bill for lunches $500?
Don’t equate ‘caterer’ school lunches with the $150 per plate meal at a chasunah.

Field trips and high costs. NO, the schools don’t ask parents. Get involved in the parents association and offer to help plan these things. It may be that the current group of parents helping to plan are those who can easily afford ‘high’ priced trips and a different point of view is needed. The school authorities will not buck their biggest donors, the other parents must join in the planning and be represented.
Our grandson’s school sponsored a trip to Great Adventure last Friday. They were charging $100. Because CT state law does not allow school trips in ‘yellow’ school buses to out of state locations, they had the high cost of chartered coaches. My daughter and son-in-law, said no, they got other parents together to also say no. The trip was cancelled for lack of response. Instead, there is an instate trip to a go-kart track and sports venue this Sunday. Cost $20. Mrs. CTL and I are providing coolers full of cold drinks and bagged snacks for less than the cost for 2 students to have gone to Great Adventure.

The reality is that many frum parents show up at yeshivot with a mindset that the posted tuition is a “starting point for negotiation” and that its up to the yeshiva to figure out how to accommodate their kids within the budgets they have allocated. They view a yeshiva education as more of an entitlement (just like a public school education) than a obligation on their own parts to secure and pay for. While most frum parents of lesser economic means are greatly appreciative of the scholarships and grants they receive and allow their kids to be admitted, most schools administrators will tell you that a small handful of frum parentsroutinely take up the percentage of their time and are the loudest and most-confrontational on tuition-related issues.

I think yeshivas should look for ways to save money and thereby lower tution .
One of the the ways to save money would be to fire secular studies teachers and tape secular studies lessons and have students learn from these tapes well enough to pass the test

apushatayid name one yeshiva that has been able to drop the secular studies program in North America.
Many rosh yeshivas don’t like to teach secular studies .
If they could forget secular studies all together they surely would.