Spinoff--Aisenstark working mothers article

amother

Amber

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 1:21 pm

Do you all believe that getting a tuition reduction is stealing? Can no one decide that both parents want to be in chinuch, or one woman wants to be home with their special needs or medically disabled child? Can no one decide that they want to start a line of business that can maximum make 70k a year so that they can learn a seder or two a day? Everyone has to have to full time working professionals if they want to send their children to a Jewish school? What about someone that is stupid and literally cannot pass college? Do they have to work bagging grocery's and make 30k a year instead of being home for their children?

I have an extremely emotionally sick child and he needs 24/7 supervision and intensive therapy. Am I stealing from you that my husband cannot make more than 70k a year and we need a tuition reduction? [I do plan on working when things stabilize, but it will be at least another 5 years].

From the other thread, it seems like people have no problem with SAHM being an ideal AS LONG as you are not getting a tuition break. Agree or not?

wifenmother

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 1:28 pm

amother wrote:

Wow! So well said!

Tuition reduction is an option for a reason. Life happens! Someone in chinuch can't afford it. Your business simply isn't producing enough income to cover it all. Or you must be (or want to be) a SAHM. If these would not be 'acceptable reasons' for tuition reduction, the tuition committee wouldn't approve it. It most certainly is not considered 'stealing'! Where did that come from?

mommyla

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 1:34 pm

I believe that everyone needs to weigh the advantages and disadvantages for themselves. I would not say that someone in your position would have to go work to pay tuition; caring for children with special needs is a job of its own (and it would probably cost you more to outsource it anyway).

Every person has to try, though - I don't think it's right to stay home under normal circumstances if it means taking charity (NOT stealing) from others. Same goes for getting Tomchei Shabbos or government programs - you have to do your part to support yourselves and your lifestyle.

If you're trying your hardest to make things work in your life, I don't think anyone will begrudge you a tuition break (it's there for those who truly need it, though "need it" is a hazy category). Even "stupid" people (as you say) should do their best. College-educated professionals also need tuition breaks sometimes! (This coming from someone who's dealt personally with tuition reductions... you really never know who qualifies for one.)

Chayalle

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 1:35 pm

I agree that if someone chooses to be a SAHM and her husband is working but they cannot afford tuition, and the tuition committee gives them a reduction, that is not stealing.

That being said, the poster in the other thread came across as a bit condescending to those parents who are both working, and are making this lifestyle possible for her. Other posters were pointing out to her that when you get a tuition break, it's not like that deficit is money that the school can do without - so it's money that is paid for by charity and by parents who are (drum-roll)....working!

As a working mother/Kollel wife, this is something I'm very aware of. Over the years, I've gotten an approximately 20% tuition reduction. My hope is that after my kids are out of school I can continue to give to their schools to make up for having needed this due to our stretching my salary plus DH's Kollel check and tutoring. I know the money doesn't come from the air, and hope to give back one day.

LittleDucky

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 1:54 pm

Chayalle wrote:

THIS.
If you are doing your best to cover tuition but failing to do it or have a serious illness in the family that prevents working enough that is WAY different than the family that decides that THEY think it better to stay home and take charity. It's one thing if they are in school and can't work- a small reduction now will allow them to pay full next year. But to just say "ideologically I think it's better to be a SAHM so give me charity to do it" is crazy. What if I hold to the concept that if I don't get my nails done weekly or eat a croissant daily I won't be a good mom so give me charity to support this?

Moms often work to cover tuition. If I knew I could get a reduction why would I work crazy hours?

m in Israel

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 1:55 pm

There is a a HUGE difference between stealing and taking tzedakah. I don't think anyone said taking a tuition break is stealing -- but they did point out that it means you are taking money from someone else. Now there are many, many situations where taking tzedakah is justifiable. But it is only fair to call it what it is. I think the reason people reacted so strongly to that amother was that her post basically said that working to pay tuition was putting your kids second (I think her exact words were "my kids are nonnegotiable", implying other people's kids are "negotiable" to them), when the irony is she wouldn't be able to have the luxury of staying home if not for those other parents who were paying more tuition then her.

(Just to be clear, I am talking about legitimate tuition breaks. Obviously if someone lies to the tuition committee that actually IS stealing. But if you are honest and the school agrees to give you a break, it is simply taking tzedakah.)

Fox

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 2:36 pm

There are a lot of things going on in your question, OP.

Really, does anyone see my avatar and think, "Oh, well, Fox will sum this up in two sentences!"

Our Attitudes Toward Supporting Jewish Schools
Unless we return to the days when individual parents taught their children, schools are a communal responsibility. Unfortunately, we tend not to act that way. Rather, our relationship to our community schools has become not unlike our relationship with the IRS (or the equivalent taxing authority in your country).

How many of us scramble to give a few dollars more to the government? I thought so. No, instead we take advantage of every legal avenue to reduce the amount of money we pay in taxes. That attitude has spilled over into our dealings with Jewish schools.

In a perfect world, we would all be motivated to give as much as we could squeeze from our budgets for our schools regardless of whether our children were enrolled, and we would make it easy for people without kids in the school to nevertheless feel a part of it. Most young families haven't reached the point where they can make major contributions to schools; they reach that point after their kids have long since graduated.

Even if you start with that ideal in mind, the schools themselves don't always make it easy. The endless politics and kowtowing to major donors makes people cynical, and they thus become less likely to give money after their children have graduated.

The Value of Seemliness
As MommyLA says, scholarship resentment usually isn't a factor until someone does something "in your face."

It's not the family with the SAHM who is resented; it's the family with the SAHM who snidely remarks to her WOTH neighbors, "We made the decision for me to stay home because our children are the most important thing in the world to us."

It's not the family who scrapes together the money and miles for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to an exotic destination to visit their Alte Bubbe who is resented; it's the family that flies to every simcha and quasi-simcha and loudly debates the merits of Disney World versus Miami.

It's not the family whose Mom gets a nice shaitel who is resented; it's the family with the Mom who loudly declares that she just can't bear to wear a cheap shaitel.

If you're going to ask for a tuition reduction, you don't have to live like a pauper, but you can't "live large," you can't be princess-y, and you can't be self-righteous about your choices. Period. Those things don't exactly lead to making friends and influencing people under any circumstances, but everyone gets downright feisty when tuition breaks are involved.

Inability to See the Forest
One of the big problems is that most of our schools are so chronically underfunded that they never get the chance to build up their assets and establish long-term financial stability.

If you apply for financial aid at Harvard, the executive director doesn't go out and shnorr contributions. The amount of available financial aid is plentiful because endowments and investments are generating income each year.

We are approaching the point in American where this could be a reality for Jewish schools, too, but a lot of schools are stuck in the need-to-make-payroll mentality. George Hanus, among others, has worked very hard to demonstrate that this mentality is not really necessary, but it's a hard slog to make the transition.

Living in Lake Wobegon
The vast majority of us live in the financial equivalent of Lake Wobegon ("where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are well above average.") According to most calculations and cited by Rabbi Avraham Twerski, a family with an income of $100K and sends their kids to Jewish schools will have the same disposable income as a non-Jewish family with a household income of $30K.

Yet a household income of $100K puts a family in the top 15-20 percent of households in America. It is not realistic to assume that 100 percent of observant Jews will all be able to land in the top 20 percent!

Sure, we can do more to prepare our kids to earn parnosseh, but insisting that everyone can join the top 20 percent simply by doing X, Y, or Z is the frum equivalent of living in Lake Wobegon. We have defined "average" up and get mad at the people who can't meet the new standard.

And that brings us full circle to the first three issues . . .

Last edited by Fox on Wed, Jun 15 2016, 2:38 pm; edited 1 time in total

amother

Amber

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 2:37 pm

HonesttoGod wrote:

What I don't feel is right is people who take tzedakah and/or tuition breaks but refuse to go out to work (and are able to do so).

Everyone agrees that to be self-sufficient including tuition is ideal if the family can manage.

I just wonder about the judgement of the "able to do so and not doing it" category.
I think this is where each person has to think for themselves honestly. They may seem able to you, but to themselves, they can't. They may be able today but not tomorrow, or able in five years, but not now. And to you they look like they spend their days drinking ice coffee. For some people, who are not naturally good mothers, going out to work is a breath of fresh air. For others, people who are not naturally good workers, staying home is a breath of fresh air.

I say, time to let go of judgement calls. You do not know what is going on in that "lazy ice coffee drinker"s home. Our's is a generation of suffering, and "able" is often "superhuman" in the midst of suffering. And even if absolutely "nothing" is going on, you still do not know what is going on because each person has their unique history and makeup. Sometimes peoples little life stresses all add up and make a person meshuga. Point is, stop looking at other people and just think about yourself.

LittleDucky

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 2:52 pm

Fox wrote:

Once again fox: THIS.
you have summed up crucial issues so clearly!

Volunteer

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 8:09 pm

Fox wrote:

Our Attitudes Toward Supporting Jewish Schools
Unless we return to the days when individual parents taught their children, schools are a communal responsibility. Unfortunately, we tend not to act that way. Rather, our relationship to our community schools has become not unlike our relationship with the IRS (or the equivalent taxing authority in your country).

How many of us scramble to give a few dollars more to the government? I thought so. No, instead we take advantage of every legal avenue to reduce the amount of money we pay in taxes. That attitude has spilled over into our dealings with Jewish schools.

In a perfect world, we would all be motivated to give as much as we could squeeze from our budgets for our schools regardless of whether our children were enrolled, and we would make it easy for people without kids in the school to nevertheless feel a part of it. Most young families haven't reached the point where they can make major contributions to schools; they reach that point after their kids have long since graduated.

Even if you start with that ideal in mind, the schools themselves don't always make it easy. The endless politics and kowtowing to major donors makes people cynical, and they thus become less likely to give money after their children have graduated.

I agree with your analogy comparing schools to the IRS. I would like to add a nuance to this. While the IRS is one central tax collecting agency for the federal government, I think our schools can also be compared to state revenue services as well.

In larger communities, there are several, if not many, schools to choose from, and most families send their children to a couple of schools, at most. While in some ways having more options available is good, it also means that families have loyalty to only a small section of their community's educational institutions. I have observed that having a niche school for nearly every Jew in town breeds a cliqueish attitude. Our resources are spread pretty thinly. It's like living in New York, and getting a tax bill from all 50 states. You would say, "I'll pay for my own state if I must, but absolutely not the others, where my family does not live!" Likewise, we say, "I'll pay for my child's school if I must, but certainly not others, which serve some other segment of the Jewish population to which I do not belong!"

What do you think?

amother

Seagreen

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 9:04 pm

Chayalle wrote:

As a working mother/Kollel wife, this is something I'm very aware of. Over the years, I've gotten an approximately 20% tuition reduction. My hope is that after my kids are out of school I can continue to give to their schools to make up for having needed this due to our stretching my salary plus DH's Kollel check and tutoring. I know the money doesn't come from the air, and hope to give back one day.

I never kept track of how much of a break we got. I always imagined that when our youngest graduated the school would give us a paper that said mazel tov, here's how much you should pay back if you choose to. They didn't. I know we owe the school a LOT. I worked for the school over the years doing different things. One I did for give or get and at some point they offered it to me as a paying job. It used to be me for give or get and some other fantastic volunteers. But the volunteers dropped out and they decided that the only way to get it done was to pay one person as a job and change the hours.

I remember speaking to the principal when he offered me the contract. I was speechless and he asked me if there was a problem, if it was enough. I told him, for years I did this job for a fraction of what you're paying me. Now I know what it's worth to the school. I feel like I made a really big dent in our debt to the school. Baruch Hashem because I don't know how we would have done this otherwise!!!

amother

Brown

Wed, Jun 15 2016, 11:26 pm

I just want to point out another angle to this. When my oldest was a baby, DH was in Kollel and college and I had started my Masters. Since I had just had a baby, we decided that the best option would be for me to be very, very part time in school, and home the rest of the time. Yes, we did have parental support, but by nature we lived a pretty frugal lifestyle. At the time I had a neighbor who was very stuck up about the fact that she and her husband both worked. One day, I was outside with another neighbor and our kids, and the first neighbor said in the most condescending tone "it's nice that you can just sit out here all day." Now just FTR, my other neighbor did have a job, she just worked weird hours and so she was often home with her kids. I was thinking to myself that this lady has no idea what my Cheshbonos are. She also has no idea that I was suffering from severe Pp anxiety, as well as a messy family situation, and was having a difficult time holding it together, and that because I was a SAHM I couldn't even dream of hiring desperately needed cleaning help like she so easily did.

Everyone can be resentful of everyone. It would behoove us all to remember that there is generally another side to the story.

saw50st8

Thu, Jun 16 2016, 7:48 am

amother wrote:

Does anyone know why more of an effort isn't made to get donations from people who got tuition breaks? Why don't rabbanim talk about the responsibility of those parents to give their maaser money to the schools that helped them out? Some might still not be able to pay but I'm sure many can?

Many of the families who got tuition breaks because they couldn't afford to pay, still can't. Once your kids graduate from high school (all of them), then there's weddings, college and retirement. Or paying back the debt from those large expenditures. Yes, once your kids graduate from college and/or get married, your major expenses are pretty much done, but by that time, most people are in their 60s and need money for their long term stability.

People who paid full tuition often feel like the've done their part and already donated so much that they are burnt out.