It appears Ontario’s public education system is once again heading toward crisis and disruption.

As reported in the news this week, the unions representing elementary and secondary school teachers are respectively in various stages of preparing for a strike vote. The unions are unhappy with the nature and the pace of their collective bargaining with the Ministry of Education.

We offer no opinion on the substantive issues being bargained by the teachers and the Ministry. Nor do we find any detriment or fault in the right to collectively bargain conferred upon teachers’ unions. Indeed, employees’ rights are sacrosanct in a system such as ours that extolls the virtue and protects the dignity for everyone in honest labour.

We do point out however, that some weeks ago, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce announced the introduction of new legislation and regulations aimed at “getting back to the basics of education.” Indeed, he touted the measures as proof that the government had listened to the priorities of parents “putting common sense at the centre of our education system.”

And yet, despite the self-congratulations by the Minister in his announcement, something clearly has gone wrong. The possibility of further educational disruption for our children following relatively closely upon the sustained, harmful Covid-related disruptions not so long ago, is untenable. It suggests a dysfunction in the overall system.

Against this background of apprehended educational disruption, we point to an op-ed published one year ago in the Ottawa Citizen by David Hunt, education director at Cardus, entitled Instead of strikes, how about ‘human scale’ schools in Ontario?

Hunt’s article was not a polemic against unions or teachers’ rights. Rather, it was a plea to all the educational stakeholders to bring new thinking to the delivery of education to our children. “We’re used to a model of schooling designed for a long-gone industrial era,” Hunt wrote. “The size, architecture and structure of our schools still reflect industrial-age thinking. Worse, Ontario’s education system has been steadily and intentionally bureaucratized, increasing the distance between the policy room and classroom.”

He suggests modernizing the system along the lines already undertaken throughout most of the Western world. “We need “human scale” schools that close the gap between those who set teachers’ salaries and those affected by their decisions, including students and their families…..  why not design schools that put students first, while rewarding teachers — and respecting parents?”

Hunt points to “Ontario’s nearly 1,600 independent schools, which are designed from the bottom-up”, as a possible model for part of the change that could be incorporated into our current publicly-funded education system.

“It may sound surprising,” Hunt continued, “but funding all students, regardless of school attended, is the norm in the advanced world — especially in Europe. In the Netherlands, for example, there are 36 different education systems, with a seemingly endless variety of school types that students can access using public funds….

“Imagine how this would improve the work environment for teachers. I favour paying teachers more, but I also hear regularly from teachers whose greatest challenges are not remuneration but classroom management. Imagine the change in behaviour that would result from students attending the school where they learn and fit in best.”

Hunt concludes his article by casting a challenge for multilateral cooperation and fresh thinking in which no-one feels assaulted or considers their interests threatened. “Rather than close schools again, let’s look for win-win solutions and reimagine education on a human scale.”

GAJE commends Hunt’s approach. It not only brings independent schools into the definition of publicly-funded schools, it also and more importantly brings our publicly-funded schools into the modern age of the most advanced, student-centred, best practices that are more likely to achieve the highest educational results for our children and that will eliminate, finally, the discrimination and unfairness that are shameful hallmarks of Ontario’s current educational funding system.

The Hunt article is available at:                           

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/hunt-instead-of-strikes-how-about-human-scale-schools-in-ontario

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If you wish to support GAJE’s quest for fairness, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

August 18, 2023

GAJE still awaits the decision of Judge Papageorgiou on the motion brought by the governments of Ontario and Canada to strike our application for fairness in educational funding in Ontario. As soon as we know her decision, we will share it with you.

It has been nearly four months since the case was argued in court on April 20. Of course, the wait is frustrating. Our frustration, however, does not stem from the length of time it is taking Her Honour to present her decision. We are certain Judge Papageorgiou is working with discipline and with wisdom to bring her best judgment to bear upon the issues she heard in her court.

Our frustration, rather, stems from the approach of the governments of Ontario and Canada toward our application. The sole purpose of the governments’ April 20 motion was actually to prevent our case from being decided on its merits. The governments do not wish the courts to consider if and/or how societal circumstances and the law may have evolved since 1996 (the year of the Supreme Court’s Adler decision) to warrant a new look at the fairness of the current system of educational funding in Ontario.

Educational and public policy experts of all political stripes suggest that Ontario’s educational funding is anachronistic. It flies in the face of the best practices evidenced in other provinces and throughout the western world. One would hope that the government would seek those best practices and to implement the best public policy on behalf of all its citizens and residents. Isn’t this the very purpose of government? It should be. Inexplicably, stubbornly, and almost petulantly, Ontario absolutely refuses even to hold a discussion on the subject.

Ontario’s educational funding also flies in the face of the plain meaning of the language in Ontario’s own Human Rights Code. It is perhaps this contradiction that deflates and pains non-Catholic religious and other minority communities the most.

The provisions of the code are concise, unambiguous and quite ennobling. The Preamble sets the tone.

“And Whereas it is public policy in Ontario to recognize the dignity and worth of every person and to provide for equal rights and opportunities without discrimination that is contrary to law, and having as its aim the creation of a climate of understanding and mutual respect for the dignity and worth of each person so that each person feels a part of the community and able to contribute fully to the development and well-being of the community and the Province;

“And Whereas these principles have been confirmed in Ontario by a number of enactments of the Legislature and it is desirable to revise and extend the protection of human rights in Ontario; (Our emphasis)

“Section 1 Every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to services, goods and facilities, without discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status or disability.  R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, s. 1; 1999, c. 6, s. 28 (1); 2001, c. 32, s. 27 (1); 2005, c. 5, s. 32 (1); 2012, c. 7, s. 1.

Is not the government’s opposition to our application, let alone to fairness in educational funding, the very opposite of the intention underpinning the language of the Preamble that it is desirable to revise and extend the protection of human rights in Ontario.?

Section 19(1) of the Code requires the Code not to be construed to adversely affect any right or privilege respecting separate schools enjoyed by separate school boards or their supporters under the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Education Act. But GAJE seeks fairness for non-Catholic communities. GAJE does not nor has it ever asked the government to diminish or derogate, in any way. the rights and privileges of the children attending Roman Catholic schools.

In sum, the governments’ hardscrabble campaign to shut down any discussion of the fairness and aptness of its educational funding harms the system. It also harms the other religious and other minority communities by entirely excluding them from receiving any public funding for the education of their children.

•••

If you wish to support GAJE’s quest for fairness, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

August 11, 2023

Earlier in the week, Ontario’s Minister of Education, Stephen Lecce, announced that his ministry had implemented the first set of regulations pursuant to The Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act.

The legislation and the regulations are aimed at enabling the government “to set binding priorities on school boards that focus on boosting student achievement focused on reading, writing and math.”

GAJE applauds this objective. Boosting student achievement is obviously a key aspiration of the province’s education system.

Minister Lecce said that the legislation and the regulations are also aimed at “getting back to the basics of education”.

GAJE also applauds this objective. The basics of education are essential, life-long instruments in every child’s tool box for contending with life’s inevitably many and constant challenges.

Minister Lecce added that “boosting student achievement focused on reading, writing and math sends a clear signal to Ontario’s school boards we’ve listened to the priorities of parents putting common sense at the centre of our education system.”

GAJE applauds this objective as well. How can common sense not be at the centre of all integrated, complex systems, let alone the education system?

Our plaudits for these stated purposes of the Minister stand without contingency or abatement. However, they evoke pointedly aching questions that settle heavily in our hearts. The questions beg to be asked. And answered.

• In the year 2023, how can the Minister of Education be wilfully opposed to extending “the basics of education” to the approximately 150,000 children who attend independent schools?

• In the year 2023, how can the Minister of Education be wilfully opposed – as a matter of common sense if not of conscience and fairness – to extending at least some public funding for the approximately 150,000 Ontario children attending independent schools?

Minister Lecce rightly touts his objectives. But inexcusably, he continues to block their implementation for the children attending independent schools.

The minister’s “back to basics” and “common sense” in education, are indeed for some, but not for all. Shame.

•••

We still await the decision of Judge Papageorgiou on the motion brought by the governments of Ontario and Canada to strike our application for fairness in educational funding in Ontario. As soon as we know her decision, we will share it with you.

If you wish to support GAJE’s lawsuit, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

August 4, 2023

From time to time, we point to educational public policy research by Cardus, a public policy think tank, that relates to the heart of the cause that GAJE is pursuing. In this week’s update, we turn readers’ attention to an open letter to Alberta business leaders written last month by Michael Van Pelt, the president and CEO of Cardus.

Entitled The Business Stake in K–12 Education, Van Pelt points out that the business community in Alberta (and in Canada) decries the lack of “workers who have the necessary non-technical skills, in such areas as communication, basic numeracy, interpersonal skills, management and leadership ability, and character attributes such as integrity and work ethic.”

He then points to research that proves that the very qualities businesses seek more earnestly in their workforce, are hallmarks of the students who graduate from independent schools.

“Independent schools, in particular, play a positive role in inculcating the knowledge, skills, and habits that animate lifelong democratic participation… Most of the skills for effective democratic participation apply equally to effective performance in the workplace. Ten years of Cardus Education Surveys have likewise demonstrated that independent schools produce graduates with the interpersonal and character skills that translate to success in the workplace….. Independent schools are also seedbeds of innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit in education.”

Van Pelt provides a reasoned, principled case to show why it is in the best interests of the business community to be more attentive to fashioning a provincial educational system that best responds to the needs of businesses and the private sector – not only in Alberta, but in all of Canada. Such a school system, Van Pelt unequivocally contends, is one that incorporates a critical mass of independent schools.

Van Pelt places a critical mass figure at 20-25 percent enrolment outside the government-run schools. And he explains why. “We would have, in effect, true choice and real accountability. Multiple school options produce more innovation, creativity, and accountability within each system…. The most effective, perhaps the only, way to create the outcomes that we need in K–12 education in Alberta lies in significant growth in educational choice. …. An increasingly robust reality of educational choice in Alberta will directly contribute to producing high school graduates with the knowledge and skills that Alberta needs. This is because choice creates healthy competition among schools and sectors, leading to better outcomes overall—and at a lower cost.”

Van Pelt writes forcefully and persuasively.

Educational choice, he says, improves all schools. Indeed, on a broader basis, Van Pelt unsubtly implies, educational choice improves society. To be sure, it gives the economy a better chance to flourish. But so too, the values of a caring, humane, civic-minded, democratic society.

Cardus has proven in other empirical research studies, the cost of integrating true educational choice within a province-wide educational system is a matter of political priority not of financial affordability. This is especially true in Ontario. (See: Funding All Students: A Comparative Economic Analysis of the Fiscal Cost to Support Students in Ontario Independent Schools, David Hunt, Anointing Momoh, and Deani Van Pelt, September 2021).

Van Pelt’s opinion piece is a well-researched, deeply footnoted, tightly argued, pragmatic plea for bringing independent schools into the public educational realm. There is also an argument to be made outside of pragmatics, based on fairness and on conscience.

The fact that Ontario – in this day and age – continues to fund the education of only one religious community to the exclusion of all others, adds injustice and unfairness to its rigid indifference to producing the best educational system possible. Why?

Van Pelt’s study is available at:

The Business Stake in K–12 Education

•••

We still await the decision of Judge Papageorgiou on the motion brought by the governments of Ontario and Canada to strike our application. As soon as we know her decision, we will share it with you.

If you wish to support GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

July 28, 2023

Since GAJE believes that Jewish education – in all its forms – is vital, we have informed readers of the progress of ADRABA, the innovative, creative, responsive, online Jewish school that provides a hands-on, for-credit, unique learning experience.

We are therefore again delighted to report that on October 16, ADRABA will begin its fourth year. By any measure, the school has been a success. It is being noticed by educators, parents and students in communities around the country.

One grateful student wrote of his experience: “I just wanted to thank you for such an amazing year. I truly had the most wonderful time being able to engage in things that interested me and am forever grateful for your engaging ways of teaching as well as your flexibility for submitting things in ways I felt I could express myself. In addition, your flexibility and willingness to accommodate my schedule will be forever remembered and appreciated.”

With increasingly supportive winds billowing strength and confidence into the young school’s sails, ADRABA continues to move forward. It advises that it will continue to serve communities outside the GTA, in Sudbury, Kingston and Ancaster while hoping to reach students in Thunder Bay. It will also continue to offer a course on Canadian history in person at the Paul Penna Downtown Jewish Day School in Toronto.

In its upcoming fourth year, ADRABA will bring back its former Grade 12, University level course, Philosophy, which will introduce students to classic thinkers in dialogue with Jewish counterparts: Aristotle with Maimonides and Locke alongside Mendelssohn. It will also introduce a new course in Media Studies that aims to provide teens with a deeper understanding of how legacy and new media and social media operate, as well as how to identify bias and misinformation – particularly when it comes to Israel-Palestine.

Sholom Eisenstat, one of the school’s co-founders, notes “ADRABA engages teens in adult-level learning that deals with sophisticated topics and challenging content – which normalizes Jewish learning as something that Jews just do.”

“ADRABA is working to create opportunities for Jewish teens across the province to acquire the building blocks [for living a Jewish life] – and more,” Eisenstat wrote last year. “Our online courses, for high school credit, are modelled on the Ontario high school curriculum and enhanced with quality Jewish content, interactive media, and challenging ideas. We add Jewish content infused with the best technological learning tools to deliver engaging and informative, live, interactive lessons and assignments. And we deliver it to teens from Cambridge to Kingston, and from Spadina Avenue to Sudbury.”

We hope and trust that ADRABA succeeds – by thinking out of the proverbial box – in reaching more and more students across the country.

To learn more about ADRABA, visit their website https://www.adraba.ca

•••

We still await the decision of Judge Papageorgiou on the motion brought by the governments of Ontario and Canada to strike our application. As soon as we know her decision, we will share it with you.

If you wish to support GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

July 21, 2023

In a recent communication to the community, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto reported that enrolment in day school education continues to grow. According to the Federation, more than 800 new students have been added to UJA’s partner day schools since 2017, at the elementary and high school level in the non-Orthodox sector.

This is a major positive development to be cheered and to be encouraged further. Therefore, as families make plans for their children’s education in 2023-3024, it is timely to remind everyone of the availability of the community’s endowment fund – The Generations Trust – specifically earmarked to help enable young families enrol their children in Jewish day schools. (For more information on The Generations Trust, contact UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.)

In the same vein, on the subject of helping to enable young families to enrol their children in Jewish day schools, we still await a decision on the attempt by the governments of Ontario and Canada to strike our application for educational funding fairness. But in the matter of GAJE’s legal case, a reminder to readers is also timely.

On April 20, Ontario and Canada argued in court that our case should be dismissed out of hand for the reason that the issue was resolved in 1996 (the Adler decision) and that decision should still stand without any regard to the circumstances that have intervened in nearly three subsequent decades.

How does GAJE answer that? Why, after all, does GAJE believe it is appropriate in 2023 to ask the court to reassess the decision of 1996 that allowed Ontario to discriminate in favour of one religion only in its educational funding?

There are a number of reasons.

First, GAJE’s application to the court raises legal issues which the Supreme Court did not decide in Adler. Therefore, the Adler decision is not a precedent binding on the court in relation to these new legal issues.  

Second, insofar as the Adler decision does apply, the Supreme Court has shown a willingness, in the last decade, to re-examine previous decisions under limited circumstances. That is, where a new legal issue is raised or where there is a change in the circumstances or evidence that fundamentally shifts the parameters of the debate. Both criteria exist in GAJE’s application.

Third, rights-based claims, such as GAJE’s case, which impact large groups, should be heard on their merits and not dismissed at the first instance without a substantive hearing. Striking down a claim about government policy and legislation, rather than addressing its rights-based merits, impacts the ability of Ontario’s Jewish parents to continue to provide the educational opportunities to their children that Roman Catholic parents have. This reduces the ability of the Jewish community to flourish and thrive in a meaningful way.

Where discrimination is perpetuated by the government on an ongoing, obviously prima facie basis, a just and human rights-respecting society should periodically review whether the continuation of such discrimination remains justified. Have circumstances changed since the discrimination was originally authorized? Has the law evolved in any relevant respect since the discrimination was first enshrined into the law? Should not the governments – of their own accord for the sake of doing the right thing – wish to re-examine their behavior in light of the passage of nearly three decades?

In short, should the discrimination that was permitted in 1996 still be permitted in 2023?

Why does the government refuse to even allow this question to be raised? We believe the courts should not only be allowed to answer this question but that indeed, they should want to compel the government to answer it too.

•••

We still await the decision of Judge Papageorgiou on the motion brought by the governments of Ontario and Canada to strike our application. As soon as we know her decision, we will share it with you.

If you wish to support GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

July 14, 2023

The CJN reported last week that the government of Ontario has announced it will enable families to have access to faith-based daycares of their choice.

On June 30, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce – in the company of Solicitor General Michael Kerzner and MPPs Patrice Barnes (Ajax), Robin Martin (Eglinton-Lawrence), and Laura Smith (Thornhill) – attended the Ledbury Jewish Centre in midtown Toronto to announce that the government has decided to fund subsidies to parents for cultural or faith-based daycare programs for their children without regard to the location of the school in relation to the home address of the family.

According to The CJN Minister Lecce said: “One of the great challenges that really rose to members of our government is that often governments create systems for bureaucracies, not for clients, not for families, and certainly not for the end user, the child.  (Our emphasis) We are going to allow portability in subsidies, we are going to give incentives to parents to choose the right child care for their family.”

(Our emphasis)

The Minister’s policy is sound. He affirms the essential principle cherished in our society that the highest priority of our education system is the best interests of the “end user”, i.e., the child. Moreover, Minister Lecce implies, emphatically we must add, that ensuring the best educational interest of the “end user” – the Ontario child – means enabling “parents to choose the right child care for their family.”

If we substitute the word “education” for the phrase “child care” in the minister’s announcement, we do not alter the principle that he so resolutely affirmed. Indeed, we affirm it further with deeper, truer meaning. For it is incontestable that the system of educating the child begins with appropriate daycare. Were this not the case, the announcement last week about the subsidies would have been made by another minister, perhaps the Minister for Children, Community and Social Services, or the Minister of Health. But, of course, the announcement was made by the Minister of Education.

The Solicitor General reinforced the inviolate principle concerning the best interests of the child when he added: “Faith-based child care that is accessible, that is equitable, is good for Ontario. It helps keep our families intact in the way that they practice their faith and maintain their culture.”

In enunciating this new educational policy, Minister Lecce and subsequently, the Solicitor General as well, echoed the preferred educational policy pronouncements by recognized educators and educational and social policy analysts. For example, in Funding All Students: A Comparative Economic Analysis of the Fiscal Cost to Support Students in Ontario Independent Schools, David Hunt, Anointing Momoh, and Deani Van Pelt (Cardus, September 2021) wrote the following:

“But as a morally formational good, parents have a prior and universal right to choose—and deeply personal interest in—their child’s education, and thus these public funds should follow families to their preferred school. Accordingly, funding is the norm around the world, as well as in Canada.”

To urge Ontario to follow the well-established international educational funding norm, the authors added: “Globally, 73 percent of countries at least partially fund independent schools—only one OECD country does not. In Canada outside Ontario, 75 percent of independent schools and 84 percent of independent-school students are partially publicly funded. Put differently, Ontario’s lack of funding is anomalous in both a global and Canadian context.” (Our emphasis)

Minister Lecce has unequivocally articulated the funding principle that anchors proper educational funding in advanced, modern western societies. Indeed, as Cardus has pointed out, that funding principle is the “norm around the world, as well as in Canada.”

But not in Ontario. Alas.

Minister Lecce acknowledged the importance and substantive soundness of that educational funding principle. The Solicitor General eloquently supported the core aspect of the principle. But it appears Ontario has no qualms in refusing to apply that principle to the 150,000 Ontario children who attend independent schools.

The CJN story is available at:

Ontario to make it easier for faith-based daycares to offer subsidies across city boundaries

•••

We still await the decision of Judge Papageorgiou on the motion brought by the governments of Ontario and Canada to strike our application. As soon as we know her decision, we will share it with you.

If you wish to support GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

July 7, 2023

Two years ago, in July 2021, we wrote how “Ontario’s anachronistic, unfair, discriminatory educational funding policies” were attracting the attention of scholars and students at home and abroad. Specifically, we pointed to an essay by Prof. Randal F. Schnoor of the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, entitled Jewish Education in Canada and the United Kingdom. Prof. Schnoor’s essay appeared in anthology No Better Home: Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging, (University of Toronto Press, 2021) edited by Prof. David S. Koffman of York University.

Prof. Schnoor wrote about the funding of Jewish education throughout Canada – historically and currently. He paid particular attention to the day school situation in Greater Toronto, focusing on the crisis of affordability. In gathering the information for his essay, Prof. Schnoor relied upon information provided by GAJE.

Two months ago, Prof. Schnoor and Robert Brym, a professor of sociology and an associate of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto, co-edited The Ever-Dying People?:Canada’s Jews in Comparative Perspective, (University of Toronto Press, 2023).The book “compares Canada’s Jews with other Canadian ethnic and religious groups and with Jewish communities in other diaspora countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia. It also sheds light on social divisions within Canadian Jewry: across cities, sub-ethnic groups, denominations, genders, economic strata, and political orientations.”

In addition to co-editing the work, Prof. Schnoor has authored one of the book’s essays, The Centrality of Jewish Education in Canada. Typically, he provides a well-researched, well-written, informative discussion about Canadian Jewry’s approach (historically and presently) to what it has always considered to be essential to developing our identity and to ensuring our survival, namely Jewish education.

In his discussion, Prof. Schnoor writes about the “affordablity crisis and response.” Once again, he refers to the work and to the writings of GAJE. We are proud to be part of this important discussion. But we are especially gratified to help enable the discussion among experts and scholars.

“While Jewish day schools and summer camps have a positive effect on Jewish identity, their cost is a barrier to access. Between 2001 and 2011 average household income in Toronto rose 11 per cent. Jewish elementary school tuition rose 61 per cent. The average elementary Jewish day school tuition in Toronto was $16,737 in 2019-20. (Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education [GAJE] n.d.). This is a major financial commitment for non-affluent families, especially when there is more than one child attending school. The Jewish community provides substantial tuition subsidies for low-income families, but middle-class families are financially squeezed. (Brym and Lenton 2020; Kotler-Berkowitz, Ad let, and Kelman 2016). They may want their children to be exposed to Jewish life and culture and to develop a strong Jewish identity through Jewish schooling, but high and rising costs are prohibitive. When added to the onerous cost of home ownership in Toronto, especially in a Jewish neighbourhood, and maintaining a Jewish household and Jewish way of life, the cost of day school tuition is increasingly out of reach for many families.”

GAJE has been involved for more than 8 years in the discussion concerning the crisis in Ontario of the affordability of a Jewish education. We will remain involved, until the discussion can be closed with the knowledge that truly affordable Jewish education has been secured for Ontario families in perpetuity.

•••

We still await the decision of Judge Papageorgiou on the motion brought by the governments of Ontario and Canada to strike our application. As soon as we know her decision, we will share it with you.

If you wish to support GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

June 30, 2023

It is that thankfully, annually recurring time of the year when most of our youngsters can contemplate a break from the grind and the routine of school. Summertime looms imminently for most children with the sweet promise of freer roaming through time and space. At least until September.

GAJE has used this space – because of the time of year – to commend, celebrate and thank everyone involved in the intricate, delicate-sturdy, immensely vital, superstructure of community education. The September-to-June discipline is not easy. We ought to acknowledge this.

• Our children, first and foremost. It is they, with egos and senses of self on the line, who pass through months of constant subtle and overt testing and evaluation,

• Teachers, school administrators, staff and volunteers. They design, run and maintain the educational superstructures of their respective schools and communities.

• Community professionals and philanthropists. They are the supportive backbone trying to ensure that the structures stand securely in perpetuity.

• Parents, grandparents and empathetic friends. They affirm, reinforce and embody the lessons their children learn every day, even as the parents – in most cases – bear the many-sided burdens of the heavy cost of sending their children to Jewish schools.

If it is true that “it takes a village to raise a child”, it is also true, if not also more emphatically so, that it takes a community to (Jewishly) educate a child. The late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks eloquently explained why this is so and how it came to be. (We have reproduced this statement in the past. It is that important.)

“For Jews, education is not just what we know. It’s who we are. No people ever cared for education more. Our ancestors were the first to make education a religious command, and the first to create a compulsory universal system of schooling – eighteen centuries before Britain… the Egyptians built pyramids, the Greeks built temples, and the Romans built amphitheaters, Jews built schools. They knew that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilization you need education. So, Jews became the people whose heroes were teachers, whose citadels were schools, and whose passion was study and the life of the mind.”

To defend, refine and perpetuate Jewish “civilization”, each generation of parents teaches their children how to live meaningful Jewish lives. Wherever Jews settled around the globe during the millennia, the community elders – leaders, sages, philanthropists, entrepreneurs and ordinary folk – ensured that a school would be built even before a synagogue was. The reason for this was obvious to most, but considered so important that it was enshrined in the 16th century, in the Shulchan Aruch (the settled code of Halachah). Jewish law required each community to ensure the presence of teachers in their midst because “the world exists only through the breath of school children.”

Exactly ten years ago this week in The Canadian Jewish News, the following observation was noted on the subject of the “breath of school children”, i.e., their voices, conversations, ideas, songs, squeals of laughter, or sobs of sadness.

“At a Grade One ceremony at the Associated Hebrew Schools in Toronto, headmaster Dr. Mark Smiley told a story about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who, when asked what God sees when He looks in the mirror, answered that God sees the hopes, aspirations, prayers and possibilities of children.

We can surmise that Rabbi Heschel was telling us that it is for the sake of our children – of all children – that God created a world that they might embrace, cherish and strive always to protect. For one another and for all mankind. It is for this reason that we educate our children in the hope that they, in time, will choose to educate their own children for the same purpose.

And so, GAJE congratulates, commends, and thanks everyone involved in educating our children. Especially our children. May the summer be safe, happy and restorative for all of you.

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If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

June 23, 2023

This update is dedicated to the memory of Mira Koschitzky.

Mira devoted so many of her prodigious abilities and talents to enhancing the possibility of Jewish education for children near and far. Her passing last week has diminished our world. But recalling her life – her goodness, her values, her example and her unshakable belief in the importance of offering assistance where needed and of getting things done –strengthens us. Her memory will always be for blessing.

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It will be two months on Tuesday (June 20) since GAJE appeared in court to defend a motion by the governments of Ontario and Canada that sought to dismiss our lawsuit because, as they alleged, it discloses no cause of action. The governments preferred to try to pre-empt the courts from deliberating upon the issues we and the Ontario Federation of Independent Schools, who have received permission to join our application, maintain raise important legal and societal questions of fairness and justice in the year 2023. We, of course, plead with the courts to fully engage with the constitutional issues that comprise the core of our application for the sake of finding the best solution for the people of Ontario.

We are still waiting for the judge to render her ruling on the governments’ motion.

Waiting, however, can be somewhat disheartening. Doubt finds a way of intruding through the tiny portals of extended time. How will the judge decide? The question nags at us with each passing day. But since we cannot know the answer to this question, we cannot allow such doubt-in-small-nagging-doses to overturn our belief in the importance of GAJE’s cause or in the correctness of GAJE’s decision to resort to the courts to seek fairness and justice.

Fortuitously, this week’s Torah portion (Shelach Lecha) arrives at this juncture of awaiting the judge’s decision. It helps to abate the doubt.                                                 

Moses sends twelve scouts to reconnoitre the Promised Land. Ten of the twelve scouts provide a negative report of what they saw. They were overwhelmed by a lack of confidence and even by fear. Faced with what they considered to be a daunting, impossible task, the ten returning scouts cringed.  In sad, pathetic, self-deprecating language they explain to Moses that the inhabitants of the land saw them (the scouts) as “grasshoppers”, i.e., small inconsequential individuals.

But far worse, the ten scouts saw themselves as grasshoppers. “We were as grasshoppers in our own eyes.” (Numbers 13:33)

One need not be a psychologist to understand the defeat that will inexorably result from such low self-esteem. If we see ourselves as tiny, incapable, weak, flimsy and frail, others will too.

Trying to help ensure the affordability of Jewish education is a daunting task. Indeed, GAJE was formed more than 8 years ago for this single purpose. We hope that we are closer to our objective. But we cannot yet say that we are close. Nevertheless, we emphatically do not see ourselves as grasshoppers in this cause. Nor will we allow others to see us grasshoppers.

Despite the enormity of the task ahead of us, we are up to it. We will not back away. We acknowledge the difficulties ahead. They may even be giant difficulties. But we will go forward until there is no longer any path forward. This statement is not only descriptive of how GAJE sees itself in this struggle for fairness and justice. It is also prescriptive – a promise: We will not give up or give in. We do not see ourselves as grasshoppers.

•••

If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

June 16, 2023