Tuition is killing us

yummymummy

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 9:00 pm

amother wrote:

yummymummy wrote:

amother wrote:

Well charter schools work by raffle, so even if you apply to one you still need to get exepted.
Also I am not a person that hs two cars, jewelery etc.
We are financialy responsible, maybe thats why I dont see the logic of paying so much money for tution.
I want to save enought to own a 300,000.00 home.
at the pace my tution is going that wont even happen.
I can only hope that the school my child is in is willing to give us the same tuition rate as last year

please explain to me how it is illogical to pay for your children's private school tuition? you want free tuition? send to public school. You want a Jewish education? someone has to pay for it. if not you, who? you think the cost is too high? how much exactly would you be willing to spend on their education?

I want to pay no more then 10% of my earnings towards tuition.

great, now all you have to do is find teachers willing to work for no more than 10% of the parent body's earnings. best of luck!

Last edited by yummymummy on Thu, Jun 21 2012, 9:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

mummiedearest

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 9:06 pm

amother wrote:

My sister in law tried to do this - send for half day, judaic only, and the school said no. Some costs are fixed per kid anyhow, whether they are there for a full day or half. Like insurance, general building costs and admin staff etc So tuition for half a day may not even be half the full tuition. Plus homeschooling does cost something. So total savings may not be what you hope.

I think that if this was a standard thing, tuition could work differently. if the school had a significant space empty for part of the day, they could rent it to another group. this is not really unheard of. if school had morning options only, they could have classes in a local shul without interfering with mincha. around here, a big shul has two rooms and a basement for storage. rent would be significantly less than maintenance costs for the larger school buildings.

ah, what the heck. let's all just homeschool. if other people do it, my dh might let me try too...

amother

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 9:06 pm

I feel for u!!!! I just got my tuition bill for next year and I was also raised $2500.00, we r barley making it now and next year my son is starting school in a different place so I am being hit with another tuition plus $2500.00 ! the only thing I can do is pray to god to make a miracle happen that I am able to afford the tuition and keep my kids in religious schools!

Tova

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 9:41 pm

yummymummy wrote:

I see that Hamodia is running a 2 part series on this topic, let's see what solutions they propose...

Does it start this week? I'll have to ask my mother to save hers for me.
Sorry I can't answer more about how the shuls function...I probably got in over my head in trying to answer/explain what someone just casually mentioned to my husband.

saw50st8

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 9:50 pm

Shalhevet,

You simplified the tuition problem a lot. First off, during the years of plenty, people didn't mind spending a little bit more for certain extras (like assistant teachers in lower grades and better facilities and smartboards). They could afford it and found it valuable. Now, in the lean years, people can't afford it but its already there.

There are halachic issues firing teachers who have been in their positions for a while.

In MO schools, the most costly part of the budget is salary - and I want my teachers paid a decent wage! And I want them paid on time. That means that they will earn more than at a Yeshivish school and often include health benefits. I am happy about this, but it costs money.

Also, once a gym is built (often by donations which must be earmarked towards a specific purpose), it cost very little to keep - and really, how do you get rid of it?

Increasing class size would work, but most parents don't want that but don't want to pay for it. Its really a double edged sword.

Where I live, schools are very pricey and many young families cannot afford it (and many families can). A new school is opening this fall using technology and cost saving measures to drive down the price to 40% less than the other local schools. My son is starting pre-k there.

ChutzPAh

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 9:51 pm

Tova wrote:

yummymummy wrote:

what building costs would you save by using shuls? you'll still have maintenance and upkeep, utility bills, etc. it'll just be for x number of different shuls vs. one school building. and what about school assemblies, plays, a library, gym, etc.?

The shuls sit empty during the day. Lights and air/heat are running. Of course these costs would increase and the schools would have to pay rent to the shuls to cover this. It's a more efficient use of resources and would save a lot. I don't know the answers to every logistical point you are bringing up, but I would rather my kids have school in a shul building than some other options to lower tuition costs (such as put 40 kids in a classroom).

Uh, who wants to start making stops at multiple shuls to pick up/drop off your kids? A regular carpool is bad enough!

black sheep

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 10:52 pm

chavamom wrote:

I read a while back about the idea that "our bubbies and zeide's paid tuition b/c they made it a priority". Two things. They had smaller families on average AND full tuition was a smaller percentage of average income.

AND, they were mostly immigrants, survivors, and poor. when a poor family, or a lower income family, prioritizes by paying most of their earnings towards yeshiva, that is commendable. but today, it is parents earning six figure incomes, working in prestigious professions, and both parents working, that are finding that 40 to 50% of their takehome income is going towards tuition. that is not commendable, that is not "sacrificing for yiddishkeit," that is extortion. there is a big problem when tuition is SO HIGH that parents earning a combined income of 150 -200 a year are finding that it is 50% - 60% of their income (if they have six kids, and of course no tuition break because he's a lawyer or whatever, tuition can easily be 100K.) the stories of our grandparents sacrificing for torah is inspiring, but go tell your grandfather that you are spending 80K a year for tuition for 5 kids, and he will not be inspired, he will tell you that you're crazy.

I don't think my kids deserve a free education, or that we shouldn't pay our schools and teachers, etc. but I am saying that something is very wrong, and it has to be addressed. the financial burden on the entire community is too great to ignore. it WILL fall apart, if not fixed, better to address it while we still have control over it. because the economy is only getting worse, and tuition is only going up, and our families are only getting smaller. this is not what our grandparents envisioned when they sacrificed to pay tuition.

yummymummy

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 10:58 pm

black sheep wrote:

chavamom wrote:

so please tell us what is very wrong? it's simple math really, where do you think that there are thousands of dollars worth of waste and inefficiencies in our schools?

eytse

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 10:59 pm

black sheep wrote:

the stories of our grandparents sacrificing for torah is inspiring, but go tell your grandfather that you are spending 80K a year for tuition for 5 kids, and he will not be inspired, he will tell you that you're crazy.

I don't think my kids deserve a free education, or that we shouldn't pay our schools and teachers, etc. but I am saying that something is very wrong, and it has to be addressed. the financial burden on the entire community is too great to ignore. it WILL fall apart, if not fixed, better to address it while we still have control over it. because the economy is only getting worse, and tuition is only going up, and our families are only getting smaller. this is not what our grandparents envisioned when they sacrificed to pay tuition.

[b]
THANK YOU!!! YES.[/b]

amother

Thu, Jun 21 2012, 11:15 pm

if a family is making let's say 150 K and spends 80K on tuition for let's say 4 kids, there is still 70 K left for the six of them to live on. This can be done. We live on half of that. However, they will be living very modestly, perhaps in a simple rental apartment, no cars, etc. very simple. Is it crazy in many ways yes, but it's a choice they make for sending the kids to a Jewish school. If that's the priority.

MaBelleVie

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 7:58 am

Ruchel wrote:

Every school a gym?? wow.
I went to a big, affluent, wealthy public school, and we went to the local gym, made private for the kids.
What next, a pool? Every single addition = other families who won't be able to send.

A gym in this context is just a big room, possibly with a basketball hoop or two. That's it. It is a place to play sports during gym class. There are no free gyms here in the US, the school would have to rent something, which would obviously add to the cost.

nylon

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 8:41 am

amother wrote:

$150K gross = at least $30K goes on taxes. Let's use the upper limit. So, 120K - 80K = $40K.

Do you seriously expect people to spend 2/3 of their income on education and live at an income which, were it really all they had, would entitle them to benefits? It's not realistic. This is not about driving a Mercedes or going on Pesach vacations. This is about health care, retirement, groceries. While I agree that the degree of gashmius in many communities is too high, I do not think tuition should come at the cost of owning an ordinary (not outrageous) home, a 401K, even a car (you'd be dooming American Jewish families to living in NYC, which comes with its own costs). Or, for that matter, college expenses, when they come.

This already expects people to make an upper middle class living--and yet, not live like they have it, which may not be tenable. When you make more money, you often have more expenses that go above and beyond keeping up with the Cohens. You may need to live in a more expensive area to be close to work; you may need to have better clothes; you may have childcare expenses above and beyond tuition.

More importantly, tuition is only going up. You can only sacrifice so much. Schools don't expect you to spend 2/3 of your take-home pay on tuition either, which is part of why we're in this mess. Everyone knows it's unaffordable.

(By the way, Ruchel, I do know of public high schools that have gyms. However, they also have enough students to spread out the cost--I know of one with nearly 3,000 students. Sports are also a much bigger thing in American schools than in French ones.)

Ruchel

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 8:48 am

MaBelleVie wrote:

Ruchel wrote:

Oh right, such a room many schools can have.
In dd's schools, they play ball in the park, the girls do dance in a classroom, stuff like that. There must be a hoop somewhere too, and I have seen a football goal in the park too.

sky

Fri, Jun 22 2012, 9:13 am

Ruchel wrote:

[Totally off topic - yep, my son's school has a pool, his tuition includes the month of July so it makes sense for them to have a pool on site, its cheaper then busing them to an offsite pool. The extra summer program with busing only costs me $250 which is significantly cheaper then any summer/camp program out there. ]