Tuition Thoughts

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  • #589945
    SJSinNYC
    Member

    Rabbi Teitz of JEC (Jewish Education Center in Elizabeth NJ – a MO school system that has an elementary school, a boys high school and a girls high school) recently posted a reply to a Jewish week article on opening a no frills school in Bergen County to reduce tuition. Some things to keep in mind when reading:

    1) While this addresses things from a MO point of view (tuition above $10k), its really proportional to the $5k+ tuition of the yeshiva world because of number of children in a family and salary base (approximately).

    2) Read the concept and please don’t take the opportunity to bash Rabbi Teitz. Whatever your feelings are of him (I don’t think he is a controversial Rabbi), please do not air any grievances you have about him here. That is not the purpose of this post.

    3) This was posted as two different posts, I am combining them.

    4) Do you think a sense of entitlement is a large problem with Yeshiva tuition? Are we forcing tuition raises on people who could otherwise afford tuition because of others who cannot pay? How much are we responsible for other people’s yeshiva tuition?

    Allow me to put the matter into very specific terms.

    In my school we have around 900 students, preK-12. Our salary budget

    is around $10,000,000, or about 83% of our $12,000,000 budget.

    An across-the-board 3% increase in salary, which is hardly huge,

    translates into $300,000+ additional expense (the extra is the 7.65%

    FICA and Medicare tax, about $23,000, which is a hidden factor but adds

    up).

    Assuming a balanced budget (and even if not balanced, the cash flow

    must be maintained), we need to find another ~$325,000 to cover the

    raise.

    Dividing that out over the 900 students means raising tuition by $360

    per student. Factor in scholarships (and 20% scholarship is also not

    unheard of) and the real increase has to approach $450 per student.

    And this is just to give the teachers a 3% raise. We’re not factoring

    in overhead, programs, etc.

    Cutting programs is enticing, as it can be lead to cutting staff

    positions. But as others have mentioned, do we cut our social worker

    or learning lab staff? The reality is that school staffs are

    significantly larger than they were even a decade or two ago. We hope

    that the additional staff improves our product. I would not risk

    cutting the programs to find out.

    One suggestion that I heard was to not give across the board raises.

    There are certainly staff members, teachers and administrators, who are

    earning well above what our parents earn, especially when looked at on

    an hourly basis. Does everyone need an annual increase? While this is

    not as difficult a matter as merit pay, which has yet to find a way to

    judge the full value of a teacher’s input into the growth of a student,

    one has to wonder how we would decide who needs the money most. Do we

    ask staff to justify their need for a raise, as we ask parents to

    justify their need for a scholarship? I’m sure many parents would see

    poetic justice in that arrangement – having teachers submit their

    income and expenses to a group of parents for them to divide the fixed

    pot of tuition dollars allocated to salaries. I’m sure there are some

    members of our staffs where only one spouse works. When looking at

    parental scholarship requests, we ask parents in similar situations why

    they expect the school to carry the burden of supporting such a life

    style; we expect that, barring exceptional situations, both parents

    will be gainfully employed. Parents can justifiably turn that back on

    us and our assumptions of fair salaries and the number of wage earners

    in a family.

    One answer given to this challenge is to increase outside funding.

    That is easier said than done. Many donors are moving away from

    general donations, preferring targeted giving to specific programs.

    While this is wonderful for gaining gifts of equipment that are beyond

    our reach (could we really afford smartboards for all our classrooms at

    $4000-5000 a pop?), it does nothing to help the bottom line. And there

    is not an endless supply of outside donors either. Many of the biggest

    givers are hit up by a growing number of institutions, so that even if

    actual giving goes up, each school gets a smaller piece of the pie.

    Finding new donors is like searching for a needle in a haystack. If

    someone has enough money for a big gift, chances are others know about

    the person as well, or will in short order. And the really big gift

    takes years to cultivate; it is rare to get a letter in the mail from a

    lawyer with a multi-million dollar check from an unknown donor’s

    estate. The larger the gift, the longer the development time, the more

    opportunity others have to approach the donor as well.

    PEJE has tried to nudge schools into sharing costs where possible. I

    think that statistics bear out that most day schools have less than 100

    students. Schools such as these might be able to find ways of sharing

    certain back office expenses: does each school need an executive

    director? can schools share office staff? But mid-size and larger

    schools have more than enough to maintain full-time executive

    directors, controllers, maintenance managers, technologists, and social

    workers. Joining with other schools just doesn’t work.

    The only real way to stop the inexorable creep of salaries is to cap

    them. That way we know that there is a maximum salalry load that we

    will achieve, within reason. This does not address newly created

    positions to address student needs. But schools will set different

    caps, or they will lure away a prized teacher by making a salary cap

    exception. I am gaining a stronger appreciation for professional

    sports owners and their problems with run-away salaries. And our

    salaries are hardly exorbitant. Do we go to a system where we declare

    “franchise” teachers and any school poaching one has to pay a penalty

    or open its protected teachers to being approached by other schools in

    return? And how do we balance less affluent schools against the more

    affluent? And how do we decide on a cap- a per hour rate? What about

    positions that are harder to fill? Is there one rate for language arts

    teachers and another for science teachers? Do limudei kodesh teachers

    get a preferential rate?

    Reality also has to play a role. In searching for a new principal over

    the past few years, I was struck that a thirty-something applicant,

    without any experience as a principal, only some limited work as an

    assistant principal, expected to earn over $175,000 in salary and

    benefits. Where does that leave a school moving forward? And the

    number of teachers we all have that are approaching or who have

    surpassed $100,000 annual salaries is increasing. In the real world,

    those salaries are not common.

    I am not advocating for salary caps. I am just at a loss looking to

    the future for a way to continue to make ends meet. The real world

    work force does not have automatic annual increases. They do not have

    a 10-month a year job structure. There is increased expectation that

    jobs are not 9 – 5 any more. People stay at work until the job is

    done, no matter how late it gets. And they give up weekends when

    needed. And there is no extra compensation for work that has to be

    taken home to be completed. And vacation days get eaten up by the

    chaggim. These are, increasingly, the realities faced by our parent

    body. And these have been the reasons we have given for justifying our

    salaries (teaching is more than just classroom time, we do research and

    prepare over the summer, etc.).

    Charter schools, after-school programs and no-frills schools are not

    the answer. The first two will wilt as soon as final exams and other

    high stakes tests are encountered. Do we really expect the same effort

    from students who are in a program that does not affect their GPA when

    the SAT is a month away? We need to be realistic. No-frills schools

    have other, external costs, as has been discussed already. The system

    we have is the one with which we must work.

    We need to be much more sensitive to parental fears. The current

    financial crisis has actually given us that opportunity. Cutting costs

    where possible, holding staff salaries in place, making a serious drive

    to increase gifts from donors, and a minimal increase in tuition shows

    that we are looking to spread the burden across all stakeholder groups.

    That worked this year. My real worry is what to do if next year is

    equally economically dismal. Where will we cut then? I have no answer.

    Not for 2010-11. Not for further down the line.

    Eliyahu Teitz

    My earlier comments were written from a parent’s perspective, having heard almost all of what I wrote in conversations with parents over the past year or two.

    Personally, I feel many teachers (and I am lucky to count many of them on my staff) are selfless in their devotion to their students. They do not know the meaning of punching a clock. Many are the graduates of JEC that still call their rebbeim and other teachers, at times even late at night, to discuss life’s important decisions. There is no way to put a dollar figure to what that is worth.

    But that does not mean that parents are not reaching a breaking point. And my post was intended to express that concern, from their point of view. We, as educators, must understand their perspective, because they are the purchasers of the service we provide. The consumers of our service, our students, probably do not stop to consider a cost/benefit analysis, but the purchasers certainly do. And they want to buy our product, but we might be placing it out of their reach.

    So much for the parents’ perspective.

    There is a significant flaw in that outlook. And it is a challenge that extends to the entire spectrum of Jewish living, as well as the greater world around us.

    We live in a world of entitlement. Everyone feels they have things coming to them. The sense of sacrifice has mostly been lost. Yes, there are remarkable example of the opposite, but by and large, people today expect to have without having to give up to have it.

    Sleep away camp has gone from being a luxury to a necessity. Pesach at a hotel. Winter vacation at Disney. Summer vacation on top of that, for those who can manage the days away. High-six and seven digit 401Ks and IRAs. A fully vested college fund.

    With all of these absolute, indispensible necessities where is there room for tuition?

    People purchase houses and calculate how they can manage their mortgage payments without taking into account that there are tuition payments as well. No one forgets to calculate the bite taxes take out of income in calculating available income for mortgage payments. But tuition, there’s always a scholarship for that.

    In past years, people worked two jobs to pay their educational obligations. Many of us took out loans to get through college. Today’s parents won’t hear of it. Let the day schools carry me so I can put money away for my child’s college. Or, more accurately, let the day school raise tzedaka to pay for my child’s college education.

    Gone is the feeling that tuition assistance is actually a request for charity. If communal rabbis would only do one thing, it should be to stress that taking a scholarship in a situation where there was not absolute need is tantamount to stealing from tzedaka.

    The biggest difficulty with that message is that there are those who really do need the help and these very words might embarrass them into not asking, which would be criminal. For there is a real need in the community for help in paying tuition. The abusers of the system make it so much more difficult for those in true need.

    In the long run, though, we are reaching a tipping point. Three children in day school can, and in some communities does, cost upwards of $50,000. That is, to most families, the single largest expense in their budget. And they are collapsing under the strain. And there is no end in sight. I was at a meeting the other night where the tuition crisis was discussed. One person asked that there be some sort of formula so that he would know that with an income of $150,000 there would be some maximum bill to pay for education. It is a reasonable request. Problem is, it can’t be done. Because one family earning $150,000 might be able to put away $25,000 annually into a retirement fund (I have yet to see teachers be able to put that much away regardless of their pay), while another family has unreimbursed medical expenses of $15,000. There is no valid basis for comparison based solely on the bottom line. So we can not give that relief.

    But we have to talk to the issue. With compassion. With understanding. And, true to our calling, with education. We must find a way to open the eyes of our community to our feelings of entitlement. Without defensiveness. With warmth. The message we have to give is not an easy one to accept. But if we are to change this one aspect of the culture of our community, we must be understanding of the other’s perception and concern. We must also step outside ourselves and check what our feelings of entitlement are, because rare is the person who is totally selfless. We all have needs, but are some of our needs as necessary as we might like to think they are.

    But even if the lesson will be learned, it will not solve the problem. We will only delay the day when parents will not be able to pay to educate their children. Large communal funds are not the panacea they seem. A well managed endowment with $100 million in it will spin off between $5 million to $7 million annually. How many donors will it take to get to the $100 million? And how many schools will get a piece of that pie? And in the era of Madoff, who will manage the fund, and how do we know it will be properly managed?

    So I leave where I left last time. Just as much worry and just as few answers.

    Eliyahu Teitz

    #649068
    squeak
    Participant

    My thought are, as before, that all the problems he brings up can be solved from the school’s perspective with a Central administrative system. I’ve mentioned this before.

    #649070
    Jothar
    Member

    I’m not sure there is a solution to the tuition crisis.

    Schools have expanded staffs to include more resource room staff and counselors. Families have grown in average size. Real income has stagnated since 2000. More people are learning than before. A lot of the guys in finance and real estate have lost their wealth. Even lawyers are getting hurt in this recession. Doctors will be affected by the new Obamacare. This is going to be a rough nisayon.

    #649071
    squeak
    Participant

    No solution does not mean no improvement.

    #649072
    artchill
    Participant

    Just arrived from the airport, but here is al regel achas a few short thoughts.

    1] Cut costs

    * Renegotiate with vendors

    * No increase to teacher salary (many other parents in school experienced this).

    2] Cut luxuries

    * Buy blow driers? instead of paper towels. (Saves at least $6,000 annually).

    * Contract for janitorial service instead of in-house salaried person.

    3] Hire rebbeim/teachers willing to teach all children, regardless of needs. This will drastically reduce the needs for “specialists”, “resources”, and “therapists” schools hire to “benefit” the children. It’s a rebbe/teacher’s responsibility to teach each child, and not shirk responsibility by finding excuses why kids are inelligable for service.

    #649073
    tzippi
    Member

    To artchill: you say to hire teachers willing to teach all the kids. You forgot able. There are great teachers who are not qualified or trained to teach all kids and we shouldn’t lose them. If you then say, well only hire teachers who are properly trained you are reducing the pool of good teachers (because there will be enough special ed specialists for the minority) AND you will likely have to pay higher salaries.

    #649074
    oomis
    Participant

    My husband IS a special education teacher of 40 years, and I promise you, he made no more money than any other teacher in the public school system. In the Yeshivah it is even more of a problem making that parnassah, because the special education is a self-limiting class and in fact my husband’s hours were cut for the coming year because of the economy (he retired from the Board of Ed and is working in a fine Yeshivah for two years now). Special Ed is Special Ed. A regular teacher is neither trained nor usually temperamentally prepared to deal with the special needs of a student who needs that type of help. You cannot have across the board teaching and hope for the best. Many children have learning challenges which can be helped in one semester or one year. We have seen that happen in my husband’s classes. Others will need ongoing help just to stay at grade level, much less advance to a higher grade level. In my opinion these are not negotiable issues.

    #649075
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    BS”D

    No increase in teachers’ salaries? Teachers are underpaid to begin with. Maybe what is needed is a removal of incompetent teachers and increased salary for the best, as objectively rated by parents and outside observers.

    Add to that a Jewish teaching corps that will pay for 1-5 years of learning in exchange for a post-kollel or advanced sem commitment to teaching at a beginner’s salary.

    #649077
    artchill
    Participant

    We live in very challenging economic times. In the average school, close to 20% of last year tution paying parents are now unemployed. FY ’10 is going to make or break many schools.

    Why should rebbeim/teachers get an increase when more than 20% of the parent body is making nothing?

    Why should rebbeim/teachers get free tuition, while those in serious financial situations have to beg for scholarships?

    Why can’t children be treated by their teachers with respect and dignity in a classroom, and gain whatever they can at their ability? If a parent demands more specialties, let them pay on a line-item basis? Why is this a school’s responsibility?

    Everyone knows that yeshivas are non-profit organizations. Rebbeim/teachers know this from the get-go that their salary will be meager. If they are unhappy, let them move on. For every rebbe/teacher in a class, there are ten other applicants dying for their slot. It’s time for supply/demand economics to take hold in our mosdos.

    #649078
    chaverim
    Member

    Chinuch Habonim is not subject to the whims of the free market.

    Rebbeim are underpaid, and under-appreciated, as is.

    Why can’t some parents treat Rebbeim and teachers with the respect and dignity they rightfully deserve, overworking and underpaid as they are.

    #649079
    SJSinNYC
    Member

    we can do whatever we want. or we can whine about it instead.

    I don’t think anyone is whining here…I think the point is for discussion. Discussion may or may not lead to new ideas which can help.

    Squeak, JEC is already is large institution. They cover an elementary school, two high schools and basically the entire Elizabeth Jewish community, shuls etc. They sort of already ARE doing that, albeit not on as large a scale as the Catholic schools.

    Jothar, JEC is basically a MO school. You don’t have many long term learning parents. You do however have a contingency of immigrants that the school allows to come for free as kiruv. There are generally a few in every grade. I would NOT want to cut that. Its some people’s only chance at a glimpse of Judaism.

    I don’t think having teachers who can teach special ed kids are the solution. Sure, a great teacher can teach a spectrum of students, but if your students are too far apart from each other (some too smart, some too challenged), someone is going to fall by the wayside. That’s not a good solution either.

    Lets say we cut the teachers raises (keeping in mind at JEC the children of the teachers do not get reduced tuition, a perk at most jobs). That saves $450 per student, with an average of 4 kids per family which yields an $1800 savings per family. Sounds nice, but remember – cost per student is around $12,000 – so $48,000. Generally, if you can afford $48,000, you can afford $49,800.

    To me the bigger problem is automatically adding in the factor for the scholarship students. If the tuition itself was reduced by 20%, that would reduce it to $9,600 per child. With 4 kids, thats an almost $10,000 savings.

    #649080
    gavra_at_work
    Participant

    BSD:

    My (grumpy) thoughts:

    There will never be a solution for the tuition crisis. The amount of money that is needed to pay the teachers that are mechanech our children will always be larger than the amount of money that parents of most families can pay. As long as we believe in universal yeshiva schooling (which we do), the costs will be too high for most, especially with many people unable to earn a living due to the economy, education, peer pressure, etc.

    The problem is when parents say “I give up, why bother working if its all going towards tuition anyway”. And who can blame them? They are right.

    If you want out, homeschool. Or you can create a school on your own where you only accept those who pay full tuition (which will be lower than regular schools, as they have to cover those who can not pay), but expect universal schooling to fail.

    To recap. The costs of schooling are too high to be covered by the average parent, with (BH) many children. Therefore, tuition will always be too high.

    Now you will ask me what they did in Europe? They did not have the costs we have, as the Mechanech lived like everyone else, in poverty. Here, we have no clue (in the most case) what poverty means (BH for MOFES!). Poverty means you went for days on end without wood for your house (which was the size of a shed from Home Depot). No running water or electricity. No health care (unless you count Bankes). In addition, most children (even in the USA in the 30’s) left yeshiva/school to earn a living. Contrast that to the USA in 2009, where everyone NEEDS…..

    #649082
    squeak
    Participant

    SJS, I doubt (but I could be wrong) that JEC has the financial capacity to make it worthwhile to hire a funds manager. It’s not only about economies of scale, it’s also about affording a qualified professional to manage the many hundred millions of dollars that yeshiva schools process. Those funds currently are under the management of very underqualified people, in every school across the country. The Catholic school system is indeed a better model.

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