I am absolutely fed up, and I know I am far from the only parent asking this question.
Can someone please explain why the boys’ yeshivos in Lakewood have already been underway for TWO WEEKS, the boys’ yeshivos in New York have been open for A WEEK, and yet not a single girls school has opened?
Who exactly is calling the shots here? And more importantly, does anybody making these calendars give even a moment’s thought to the parents?
There are thousands of families where both parents work because they have no choice. We are working to pay our mortgages, grocery bills, camp bills and enormous tuition bills — many of us making it through each month by the skin of our teeth.
And then, for reasons nobody seems capable of explaining, our daughters are sitting home for weeks after camp ends.
Who is supposed to watch them?
Parents who have jobs are somehow expected to tell their employers that they need to take off for a week or two because the schools decided that September apparently begins at a different time for girls than it does for boys.
It is absolute insanity.
And please, spare me the explanation that the teachers need a vacation after working all summer.
You know who else needs a vacation?
The parents.
I didn’t get one.
My wife didn’t get one.
Most working parents I know didn’t get one.
We worked all summer. We paid for camp all summer. Camp ended nearly three weeks ago for my daughter, and we’ve been scrambling ever since.
Now, finally, the schools are beginning to open. But first we get the almost comical “orientation” — a tiny fraction of a school day — before actual school finally begins on Thursday.
Orientation? After nearly three weeks at home?
How about opening the doors and having school?
I would genuinely like someone from the leadership of our girls schools to explain the logic. Why can the boys start Elul on time while the girls remain home? Why is it simply accepted that working mothers and fathers will somehow figure it out? Why isn’t the burden being placed on families even part of the conversation?
And let’s discuss tuition.
Parents are expected to pay every dollar of tuition, on time, regardless of how difficult their financial circumstances may be. Schools understandably tell us that teachers must be paid, buildings must be maintained and budgets must be met.
Fine.
But shouldn’t parents be entitled to expect school in return?
If the school year is going to be shortened by leaving our children home for weeks while parents are forced to miss work, hire babysitters or cobble together childcare arrangements, perhaps parents should begin asking whether the tuition bill should be shortened as well.
Maybe parents need to band together and say enough.
Maybe instead of automatically paying the full year’s tuition, parents should calculate what these weeks without school cost their families and deduct it.
That might finally get somebody’s attention.
This isn’t about attacking teachers, who work extraordinarily hard and deserve our appreciation. It is about a system and a calendar that appear completely disconnected from the realities facing the families paying for that system.
We deserve an explanation.
Who took achrayus for this schedule? Who decided this makes sense? And who is going to take responsibility for changing it?
Because expecting thousands of parents to simply absorb weeks without school year after year is not normal.
And parents need to stop pretending that it is.
A Frustrated Working Parent – NY/NJ
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10 Responses
> Who is supposed to watch them?
I presumed the girls stay home specifically to help parents! My girl school routinely lets girl earlier before every yomtov so that they help their mothers! If your eshes chayil has everything done already, let them go do chesed by babysitting!
As to school days, you are entitled to – and should! – find out school policies in advance and negotiate all conditions as you would do with every purchase. If you don’t like their policies/prices, open a small school with neighbors, homeschool or send them to online schools. It is doable.
Wait until 2032:- Labor Day is on 1st day of ראש-השנה:- Hasn’t happened since 1964.
I’m not even touching on how 770 shall handle the West Indian Parade & going to ראש-השנה services.
But what I am saying is:- Sadly many children shan’t have any schooling preparing them for ראש-השנה in 2032.
🙄
Some private interests and groups of machers hijacked the yeshiva system and they now govern when camps are supposed to open and close, when staff has to get back to Yeshiva, and when people should go and come from upstate. But nowhere in their cheshbonos do they factor in that girls don’t start school till labor day and that their teachers would never agree to start early. So now you have familys split apart in a completely retarded way as you describe
I’m sorry to let you know that not everybody has that schedule. Brooklyn chasidishe day camps both girls & boys finished last week and they are starting school/cheder this week. Some children have off a week while some boys have off 3-4 days. This year there was a huge schedule difference between New York, New Jersey camps & yeshivas. New York schedule typically runs according to the secular calendar since many schools take regent exams. Majority of New Jersey runs according to the elul calendar. Then there’s girls sleep away camps trying to accommodate NY & NJ different schedules.
If you were working all summer, perhaps you should have been buying the Yated Neeman in the summer. For multiple weeks, the theme on the front page was idyllic, peaceful pictures of Jews lounging around in the great outdoors. The message was “It’s summertime. Everyone else is having a great time vacationing. If you don’t, you must be the only loser who can’t afford to take off for the whole summer”
The idea of girls staying home to help parents or do chesed by babysitting highlights a real difference in how we see roles. The family is central, and men and women have distinct, good roles within it. Justice means what you owe a particular person. When the system makes assumptions that ignore the actual circumstances of parents, especially working parents, that’s not just. It creates a burden that falls unevenly and without real consideration for individual families. We should expect school policies to recognize the realities of modern family life, not impose a one-size-fits-all solution that leaves parents scrambling.
Mr. Letter Writer, thank you for speaking out for all of us. We’ve been saying this too however you put pen to paper and we’ve just been gossiping about the very same issue. And these schools are supposed to be teaching our children the Torah way of life: gimme a break! Thank you again!
Mr. Letter Writer-
I hear your concerns and I feel your pain. I’m definitely not trying to make light of your concerns but there’s another side to the story.
While many are struggling to pay tuition- the amount that the school brings in is nowhere near enough to pay a qualified teacher a competitive salary. If schools want qualified teachers there needs to be a perk- in this situation it’s lots of time off.
My wife has 30+ years of experience and advanced degrees but she still makes less than what I was earning when I was entry level straight out of college. She knows she’s seriously underpaid but she loves the extra days before and after Yom Tov as well as in between camp and the start of the school year.
Would you rather that the schools have more school days and pay the extra tuition required to pay the teachers the going rate salary?
I won’t jump to say it’s the school’s fault, girls have been starting school around Labor Day for the past Century, that’s not going to change now. The problem is the system got pressured by many young new yeshivas and roshei yeshivos that insist its elul or nothing , and forced a change from the public school calendar to the Yeshiva Gedola model, but without considering that most families are not on that schedule both with camp life and having many daughters. And this is the result, chaos that nobody wants to answer for