Weekly Update: July 29, 2016 — 23 Tamuz 5776

Other communities rising on behalf of affordable Jewish Education

GAJE is dedicated to reimagining the funding of our schools. We are a catalyst for keeping the subject of school affordability on the community agenda. And we are a catalyst for actually finding funding solutions. We hope to create an educational trust that will permanently provide sufficient, stable funding to enable families to send their children to Jewish schools. Funds will be distributed to the schools by mechanisms currently in place in accordance with principles of need, accountability, transparency, efficiency and fairness.

The struggle to make Jewish education affordable, however, is taking place throughout communities all across North America.

We bring to our members’ attention the success of one organization based in New York, Affordability of Jewish Education Project (AJEP) that is attempting to solve the problem by reimagining education. AJEP just announced that the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach, the first school with which it collaborated on an new approach to the delivery of education – the 2 Sigma Education model –was able to show significant academic gains for students at the end of the school’s second year while also saving $450,000 from its elementary school’s annual budget.

To read more about the 2 Sigma Education model and the school’s achievement, visit www.ajeproject.org.

Our approach, our belief is that reimaging the funding of an educational system will inexorably intersect with a revised, even reimagined, educational system itself.

The point of sharing the exciting news of the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach is to show our members that throughout the Jewish world where individuals feel strongly about perpetuating their Judaism, families, parents, grandparents, educators, administrators, community leaders and community professionals are taking upon themselves the task of finding ways to reduce the unconscionably high cost of Jewish education.

The key is to change the mindset that says: the problem has no solution. Indeed it does.

Indeed, in time, we will solve it.

•••

Reminders:

1. Please contact your rabbi to ask him or her to speak out during the High Holidays or even sooner on behalf of affordable Jewish education.
2. If your family is eligible for the tuition cap program at the AHS or Leo Baeck campus in Thornhill, please enroll. Contact the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education at the UJA Federation for further information, 416-635-2883.
3. Please contact your Member of Parliament to help ensure funding for security needs of the school your children attend. Contact CIJA for further information, 416-638-1991.
4. We believe with all our hearts that the crisis regarding the cost of Jewish education is solvable. We believe that to say there is no solution breaks faith with our forebears and with the deepest values affirmed throughout Jewish history. We further believe that the obligation to solve the problem lies with the entire community.

•••

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE