artchill: “Chicago contracts out tuition decisions. Each parent must send in their Tax Returns to the contractor who has a computer algorithm that sets a tuition rate. This takes the ability of one domineering tuition commitee member from taking revenge against families he doesn’t get along with.”
That could very well be one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard. Tax returns = no lying to the yeshiva unless you want to risk the wrath of the IRS (for the complete fools who fear the wrath of the IRS more than the wrath of Heaven); private contractor/algorithm = no (OK, less) fighting or haggling over tuition, it is what it is. Brilliant.
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This has been said again and again here, but I think it’s worth repeating one more time: People must, and when I say must I mean positively must, stop putting tuition at the bottom of their list of things to spend money on. As has been recently demonstrated in Lakewood, schools need money to function. Therefore, your tuition is your investment in your child: there is absolutely nothing (short of bare necessities) that could possibly be more important than that! How can people even think of paying for vacations, massive simchos, fancy cars/house/clothes etc, before paying for their children’s chinuch?! Where are their priorities?! Where are their brains?! What on earth are they thinking?!