There are many baalei tshuva who attended public school right through high school. Obviously, if they had been gunned down in a school shooting, they never would have been able to become baalei tshuva. To answer the original question, yes, it’s less of a tragedy. Orthodox Jews are still a minority of American Jews. Even though Orthodox Jews have many more children per family, I suspect there are still more school age heterodox children that Orthodox ones. Hence the majority of American Jewish children attend public schools because their parents want their children in public schools. Tuition is not the issue. Given the choice of sending their children to a public school, a private secular school, or a Jewish school, even if they were all tuition-free, very few heterodox parents would choose the Jewish school.
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