Reply To: Rejection from yeshivos/school for no tuition

I doubt that anyone here would accept a position that a yeshiva is not entitled to cover its expenses. It is nearly universal that our teachers and rebbeiim are underpaid. Poor salaries attract entry level employees, who also have not spent time or money to get training and develop expertise. So we then have much reason to complain about the actual education, the discipline that varies from the cruel to the foolish. So we can all agree that our yeshivos need to funded adequately to be able to function without constant worry about paying their faculty well and on time.

From where can yeshivos squeeze the money needed when there are parents who cannot afford tuition? This question has been plaguing the frum community for many years. With several funding sources either eliminated or severely diminished, it appears that yeshivos turn to the parents, and the rub is painful. AS it is, many are paying beyond their means. There are those cases of families that splurge on various luxuries while defaulting on their chinuch responsibility, but mostly this is not the case.

Parents who spend on everything but tuition might justifiably be “punished”, whatever that means. But the child, a precious neshomah is being cast aside, thrown to the street, for something he/she did not do. That child is sentenced to a life without the basics of chinuch, pushed into the waiting and welcoming arms of the street with its decadence. Will this child keep Shabbos, stay off drugs, etc,? I know the yeshivos need leverage, but is this it? I do not have another idea, but I have trouble believing this is it. And Gedolei Yisroel have discussed this subject, frowning strongly at the “discarding” of neshamos to the street as the consequence for the parents’ failure to fulfill their responsibility.