In a hearing yesterday, April 20, before Ontario Superior Court Justice Eugenia Papageorgiou that lasted an entire day, the Attorneys General for Ontario and for Canada argued that GAJE’s application for fairness and equality in educational funding should be thrown out of court even before it has had the chance to receive a full hearing on its merits.

Counsel for the governments steadfastly maintained that the 1996 Adler decision by the Supreme Court “was entirely dispositive of the application”. They argued that we had not met the test required to set aside a decision of the Supreme Court, namely to show compelling new circumstances or an evolution in the law since the decision in question. They stated that since the Adler case is still “good law”, GAJE has “no chance of success” and thus our application should be dismissed at this early stage.

GAJE’s counsel, David Matas and Jillian Siskind, argued to the contrary. They suggested there are a number of reasons – based upon changing societal and educational circumstances and upon the evolution in the relevant law since 1996 – to warrant allowing our case to proceed through the courts for a full and substantive airing of the important issues related to equality in educational funding under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Education Act of Ontario.

GAJE’s case has “at least a glimmer of hope,” our counsel responded. “It is not baseless,” they said. As a result, the case should be given the opportunity to arrive at the courthouse door for thoughtful deliberation and proper consideration.

Our counsel spoke substantively, forcefully and often eloquently, reminding the judge that GAJE and the other applicants in the case are not seeking special treatment. Rather, we are seeking equal treatment under the law. One argument they raised will be especially familiar to our community.

They pointed out that the Attorneys-General were effectively attempting to freeze the application of the law in Ontario regarding educational funding to a time and to conditions that obtained nearly 30 years ago, in 1996. Citing words from the Supreme Court, however, they reminded the judge that the Constitution of Canada must be seen and interpreted as if it were a “living tree”. It must adapt, to be sure, in a precise and responsible way to ensure its ongoing relevance to ever-changing conditions of modern life.

GAJE’s effort to make Jewish education truly affordable to all families is an effort to help enable permanent, meaningful access to in-depth learning of the ancient-eternal values and way of life enshrined in the Torah. How touching and ironic, that the very plea our counsel made to the judge that she regard Canada’s Constitution as a “living tree”, is actually how our people have viewed the Torah for generations upon generations. It has always been and will always be our “living tree” as well. Our Tree of Life.

Judge Papageorgiou reserved her decision. We will share it when we know it.

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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)

April 21, 2023

Next week, on April 20, GAJE’s lawyers will be in court responding to a motion brought by the Attorneys General of Ontario and Canada that seeks to strike our application for fair educational funding. The governments are trying to have our case dismissed before we have even had an opportunity to argue its substantive merits. They allege that our application discloses no cause of action and therefore deserves no hearing.

As readers of this weekly update know, GAJE’s application ultimately asks the court to order the governments to act fairly towards the non-Catholic members of Ontario in the vital matter of educational funding. We are asking the court to declare that the refusal by the governments of Ontario and Canada to fully fund Jewish day schools in Ontario breaches the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Our lawsuit addresses the fundamental, even brazen, unfairness of school funding in Ontario. In our  province, Roman Catholic schools receive full public funding while the schools of other religions receive nothing. This arrangement stands in stark contrast to five other provinces – Quebec and all the provinces west of Ontario – where independent schools, including religious schools, receive public funding. We believe that Ontario’s discriminatory policy breaches the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that this discrimination must finally end. Years of waiting, lobbying and hoping for successive Ontario governments to change this policy have been in vain. Because we have no other recourse to achieve justice and fairness in funding, we are now turning to the courts.

Ontario justifies its ongoing discriminatory funding practice on the Supreme Court’s decision in 1996, that provided legal sanction for its discrimination. And so, relying upon that decision, the attorneys general have decided to try to prevent the court from deliberating upon the important issues that cry out for consideration for all Ontario families some three decades later.

In the intervening 27 years since the 1996 decision, the facts and circumstances surrounding educational funding have significantly changed. The law too has begun to evolve to comprehend and try to accommodate those changed circumstances.

It is a sad comment that the governments prefer to prevent a full airing of the issue of fairness in educational funding, rather than let the courts help guide them to a better embrace of all of the issues underlying the funding anachronism for the benefit of all Ontario families. Thus, we head to court next week, placing our trust in the wisdom of our judges. We will share the decision of the court with GAJE supporters as soon as we have one.

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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)

April 14, 2023

In last week’s update we reminded readers of the seminal study released by Cardus in 2021 that carefully calibrated the cost to Ontario of actually providing some level of funding for the benefit of the children in the province’s independent schools.

We bear in mind that the Cardus researchers based their calculations on information available in 2021. But their study is as deeply relevant today as it was then. Indeed, more so. The study proves that the government’s decision not to give funding to independent schools turns on political will not on fiscal prudence.

Cardus established that within the scope of Ontario’s 2021 estimated annual budget, funding independent schools through a range of some 21 possible funding formulae – all of them based on current practices within Canada – would cost Ontario around 1/3 to 4/5 of 1 percent (0.3% to 0.8%) of the budget. “In other words,” the study concluded, “any of these funding options is a relatively minimal cost to substantially benefit the families who need it most.”

As we know, all of the western provinces as well as Quebec, find the financial means to provide funding for independent schools in their province.

Some 5 million people live in British Columbia. Its projected budgetary expenditures for 2023 was $81.2 billion.

The BC Ministry of Education and Child Care describes the purpose of school system thus: “to enable the more than 570,000 public school students, 89,000 independent school students, and more than 4,500 home-schooled children enrolled each school year, to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to contribute to a healthy society and a prosperous and sustainable economy. “

Albertahas a population of 4.4 million people. The expenditures of the 2023 budget were forecast as some $68.3 billion.

Alberta’s Ministry of Education describes its education system as being “built on a values-based approach to accepting responsibility for all children and students. Inclusion is a way of thinking and acting that demonstrates universal acceptance of, and belonging for, all children and students.”

Ontario is the most populous province in the country. Some 15 million people live here. Ontario’s projected budget for 2023 is around $204 billion. Yet, the government has closed its heart to the children in its independent schools.

It is not surprising therefore, compared to BC and Alberta, the mission statement of our Ministry of Education is a meek statement of cliché and platitude. “The Ministry of Education is responsible for delivering a high-quality publicly funded education system from Kindergarten to Grade 12, and for the oversight of Ontario’s child care and early years system. The ministry is committed to ensuring the province remains a leading education system, both in English and French.”

Inexplicable, Ontario persists in finding no reason – neither sound public policy nor even conscience – to provide funds to independent schools. GAJE hopes this will change. GAJE hopes the courts will agree that this discrimination can no longer be justified in the year 2023.

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Passover begins this evening. It is our fervent hope that everyone who reads this update will enjoy the holiday and savour the commemoration as one of historic connection, religious significance and family delight.  

The messages deeply encoded into the Haggadah – some overt, many nuanced – are of hope. Each generation understood those messages according to the circumstances of their respective time. Never ever lose hope. That is the affirmation of a people used to struggling against greater numbers and against the odds. That message inspires GAJE.

•••

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.

•••

Chag Pesach samayach. Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

April 5, 2023

The Ontario government delivered its budget for the coming year and forecast expenditures of $204.7B. Of that amount the Ministry of Education estimates it will spend around $35 B. The treasurer also announced new initiatives for building more schools and child care spaces in the years to come.

The Education ministry states that the average provincial per-pupil funding amount is about $13,059 for 2022–23, an increase of $339 or 2.7 per cent from 2021–22. 

Once again, the government has rejected providing any level of funding for the approximately 150,000 children who attend independent schools in the province. Ontario’s callous treatment of them is puzzling, disheartening and unfair.

This recent attention on budgets and expenditures marks an appropriate moment to recall the seminal research study by Cardus in 2021 that actually calculated the potential cost to the provincial treasury of funding all students in Ontario’s schools. Not surprisingly, the study was entitled Funding All Students (https://www.cardus.ca/research/education/reports/the-cost-to-fund-students-in-ontario-independent-schools/).

GAJE highlighted the study’s key conclusions at the time it was released. A reiteration of those conclusions is warranted once again in light of the government’s regressive recalcitrance on this very important matter.

The following passages are excerpted from the study’s executive summary:

“This study presents the hypothetical economic costs of funding Ontario’s independent schools, if the province were to fully fund the sector or apply any of the existing partial-funding models in Canada.

“But before conducting the cost analysis, we first establish context and ask: Why should Ontario fund students at independent schools? Simply, as education is a socially formational good, society has a general interest in the education of the next generation of citizens. It is on this basis that taxes are raised to fund any child’s education. 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. 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.

We…conclude that Ontario’s lack of financial support for independent-school students is an unjust and inequitable policy—uncharacteristic of a democratically elected government, especially in an advanced economy—that further disadvantages the already disadvantaged.

“To rectify this eccentric and unjust policy, there are seven funding schemes, all taken from actual practice in Canada, to estimate the cost of funding students in Ontario’s independent schools.

“The first applies full government funding to Ontario’s independent sector. Alternatively, Ontario can partially fund independent schools using a similar approach as any of the other provinces that partially fund this sector—from west to east: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan (two models), Manitoba, and Quebec. (In each of the seven funding schemes, the model recognizes that not all independent schools would qualify for or accept government funding, and this fact is accounted for in the analyses.)….

“Applying [three different] scenarios to each of the seven provincial funding schemes results in twenty-one cost estimations, ranging between $535.2 million and $1.539 billion in net annual cost to Ontario taxpayers.

“[W]ithin the scope of Ontario’s $186 billion annual budget, [Note: The Cardus study was published in 2021] this is around 1/3 to 4/5 of 1 percent (0.3% to 0.8%) of the budget. In other words, any of these funding options is a relatively minimal cost to substantially benefit the families who need it most.”

There is no doubt that provincial government expenditures support necessary, vital programs. No-one would deny this. What the Cardus study proves incontrovertibly however, is that including independent schools under the rubric of public funding is not – in truth – a matter of cost to the treasury. It is, rather, a matter of the will of the government.

That independent schools receive no funding at all from the provincial government is shameful.

•••

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)

March 31, 2023

(In memory of Rabbi Professor Michael Brown)

Jewish tradition understands that very few of us walk our present paths or seek our future roads without the prior love and labors of our late elders. B’zchut avot. By virtue of those who came before us, our tradition says, we can stand strong in sun or storm.

The designs and content of delivery systems of modern Jewish education – in schools locally and abroad – owe a great deal to those of our late elders who, with unfailing commitment and far-sighted vision, did the hard work of establishing and continually refining meaningful Jewish education for the generations to come. For example, the late Syd Eisen and Julia Koschitzky were two revered elders whose influence will benefit countless children and families and communities for long years. We have written about them in this space.

This week, alas, we write about and include among our late revered elders, Rabbi Professor Michael Brown.

Rabbi Professor Brown passed away on Friday, March 17, 2023. At his funeral, his children modestly described him as a man of “words and ideas”. He inclined to frameworks of rule and certainty. But, as was observed, “decency was the rule that overruled all the others.” He never wavered from “the necessity for kindness, generosity and loyalty.”

His academic, teaching and communal contributions and involvements were legion and greatly varied. They have been heralded and celebrated by scholars, educators, pedagogues and lay leaders wherever Jewish education has found a key place in the hearts of communities around the world.

The Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, Canada’s first interdisciplinary research centre in Jewish Studies, and in which Brown played a foundational role, has published a memorial tribute to Rabbi Professor Brown. It can be found at: https://www.yorku.ca/cjs/

We excerpt merely a few references from the tribute to illustrate – admittedly only with minimal strokes – who this remarkable man was and how profoundly significant were his devotions to the vital field of education in all its myriad manifestations.

“In 1968, while he was still completing his PhD, Michael Brown was recruited by York University to build a Jewish Studies program, ex nihilo.… The Jewish Studies program he built eventually became York’s Israel & Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies; he served as its director from 1995-2002. .. 

“Brown was a pioneer academic in Jewish studies in Canada, voluminously published in a range of areas – including history, literature, political science, and education over the span of more than half a century….

“He helped to establish and was instrumental to the success of York’s program in Jewish Teacher Education, and served as its coordinator on and off from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s…. Professor Brown published numerous works on Jewish education…and wrote extensively…He published nine books, including the oft-cited edited volume, Not Written in Stone: Jews, Constitutions, and Constitutionalism in Canada, with Daniel Elazar and Ira Robinson (2003) – one of the only scholarly works that grapples with the implications of the Canadian constitution for Canadian Jewry.” It should be noted that this work and the scholarship underlying it are germane to GAJE’s mission and work.

Rabbi Professor Brown “developed the unique Mark and Gail Appel Program in Holocaust and Anti-Racism Education – recently revived for the coming years – as a means to train future formal and informal educators about the Holocaust, antisemitism, and racism, and brought together an international group of students in education, journalism and other fields to study Holocaust history, post-war responses in Germany and Poland, and Canadian perspectives on the Holocaust and genocide.” 

He “generously shared his expertise, experience, and judgment with many organisations and groups outside of the university. His involvement with Toronto’s Associated Hebrew Schools, TanenbaumCHAT, the United Synagogue Day School, Camp Ramah’s North America wide Mador program for emerging educators, Bet Sefer Le-Dugma in Jerusalem, the National Board of License for Teachers of Hebrew in North America and Academic Advisory Board, and the Moscow Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization allowed his good counsel and expertise to spread exponentially.”

There is more to read and to know about Rabbi Professor Michael Brown. GAJE encourages readers to take the time to do so.

In the past GAJE has referred to a volume of essays that emerged from a conference titled Creating the Jewish Future which was held at the Centre for Jewish Studies at York University in 1996. Brown was then the Centre’s director. The essays were published in 1999 under the same title as the conference. Along with Bernard Lightman, he was the co-editor of the volume.

Prof. Brown wrote the following inspiring exhortation in the Introduction. It remains GAJE’s operational guideline to this very day.

“If North American Jewry wishes to survive into the next millennium, it cannot allow blind forces to determine its destiny. It must create its own future out of the legacy of the past and the realities of the present. As Morton Weinfeld notes in chapter 19 of this volume, the future is not determined; it need not be accepted passively; it can be shaped and created. But if the community is to take its fate into its own hands, then present reality and future goals must be clearly defined and squarely faced.”

Prof. Brown’s daughter, Abby, said that her father’s legacy includes caring for “history, tradition, faith, ethical morality and learning. He blessed us with a connection to history and with his love.”

In poor repayment of the blessing and the debt we owe to the late elder, Rabbi Professor Michael Brown, we commit to trying to shape and create a future where Jewish education is truly affordable for the families that seek it for their children.

Rabbi Professor Michael Brown’s memory will always be for blessing.

•••

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)

March 24, 2023

It is far better for us to act on vital moral imperatives based upon a foundation of our traditions, values, and ethical teachings than to trust in “princes”. This is the instruction (freely translated), we find in Psalm 118. Our sages regarded it as sufficiently helpful and even important for the conduct of one’s life at the crossroad of major decisions, that they included the instruction in the Hallel service recited in celebrating holidays and the arrival of the new month.

Just whom the psalmist intended by the term “princes” varies, of course, for each generation in their respective, unique contexts. But if we rely on “princes” – in our own day perhaps politicians, or self-appointed individuals in authority – to do what must be done for the sake of the wider good, the psalmist warns that we do so at our peril.

The question then must be asked: how should we act when the times, the urgency, the situation calls for action? Rabbi Marc D. Angel, the founder of the New York-based Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, helps us answer this question.

In his commentary on last week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa, Rabbi Angel points to Moses’ behaviour as an example for us. Even though Moses had shattered the sacred tablets of the law when he saw the profoundly upsetting behaviour of his people in the episode of the golden calf, he did not give up on his people or on his mission. In overcoming his disgust, anger and disappointment, Moses acted in a manner that Rabbi Angel suggests holds clues for us when we too face, and must rise above, deep disappointment.

“The real world simply does not conform to our aspirations and expectations,” Rabbi Angel wrote. “We dream of—and work for—a world of peace, harmony, mutual understanding. We hold our dreams in our hands, like the tablets of the law that Moses held at Mount Sinai.…

“We might have expected Moses to have given up… after the sin of the golden calf. After shattering the tablets, he might have realized that the pieces could not be put back together again; the visionary gleam was gone, and the dream…..But Moses did not give up….He would not allow negative realities to divert him from his ideal dreams…

“Yes, there is a huge gap between the ideal world and the real world. It is easy to lose hope, to give up, to let the broken pieces of the tablets stay broken. It is difficult to overcome…. disillusionment. But, like Moses, we need to rally our strength.”

GAJE too, dreams of – and work for – a world of peace, harmony, mutual understanding. In our case that world is one where educational funding in Ontario does not favour the education of one religion above the others, where all disabled children with special learning needs are treated equally according to their disability and not according to the name or the address of the school they attend, where the government recognizes the important contribution of independent schools to the building of a better, more inclusive, tolerant and prosperous society.

GAJE long ago abandoned the hope that the “princes” of our government would act out of conscience or out of a sense of improving the overall system to do away with the discrimination in our educational system. Instead, the “princes” are attempting to prevent a hearing on the merits of our aspiration to make the dream of educational fairness a reality in the Ontario of the year 2023. One week after Passover, on April 20, GAJE will be defending the governments’ attempt to strike our application.

Our dream is to eliminate the gap between the ideal world and the real world. And like our revered teacher, Moses, GAJE will neither lose hope in nor give up the struggle to achieve it.

•••

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)

March 17, 2023

Toward the end of last year, Paul Bernstein, the CEO of Prizmah, the New York-based centre and network for Jewish day schools of North America, wrote a small essay in which he conveyed his sense of optimism about the future of Jewish day schools.

Bernstein began his reflection with the fact that Jewish day schools emerged from the early and ongoing Covid pressures in relatively better condition than many other independent schools and certainly better than local public schools.

“Jewish day schools are well positioned for further success,” Bernstein wrote. “Enrollment across the field is up—and the vast majority of families that joined because of Covid have stayed; our schools excelled during Covid—strengths that neither were created by the pandemic nor will disappear as it passes; the perceived value of day schools is increasing; and we are seeing more new, significant investments in our schools by philanthropists than we saw in recent times. Being an optimist and witnessing the new trajectory for our schools gives me, and Prizmah, the opportunity to set a course for ongoing and increasing impact, partnering with schools, communities and philanthropists.”

Bernstein enunciates the elements that “have contributed to current enrollment growth.” Those elements are: strong community relationships, positive perceptions about our schools, and professionalized recruitment and retention operations. He also emphasizes the need for schools to maintain the educational excellence that “makes or breaks a school.”

The final, if not the overriding, factor Bernstein acknowledges as determinative of the future of our day schools, is their affordability for the wide swath of young middle class families.

GAJE agrees with Bernstein in all respects. But affordability is still the key. Who knows how current uncertain economic conditions will adversely affect young families’ abilities to enrol their children in day school? Trying to ensure that our schools are truly affordable is and remains the wind in GAJE’s sails, propelling us determinedly forward until they are.

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The Bernstein article is available at:

https://www.prizmah.org/hayidion/affordability/ceo-good-cause-optimism

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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)

March 10, 2023

Ontario’s unequal, preferential educational funding is anchored in history. It is on the basis of the historic bargain that tied the two great anglophone and francophone societies together that Ontario’s funding policy is legal. Most of the country has moved past the educational funding model that dates to 1867 since most educators and educational policy makers understand that an approach to education based upon political and social conditions of 1867 no longer substantively, let alone morally, serves the best interests of the widely diverse Canada of 2023.

History determines the legality of Ontario’s approach. Sadly, the brazenly unjust, discriminatory nature of that approach plays no role whatsoever in the government’s mind in tainting that legality.

No aspect of the government’s disinterest in the fairness of its policy hurts or enrages more than its unfeeling disregard for the special health support needs of children with disabilities in independent schools. Because the Minister of Education deems all educational aspects of even the disabled child’s learning needs covered by the funding approach anchored in the 1867 agreement, it feels legally entitled to ignore those needs too.

Should not the fact of the child’s disability rather than the address of the child’s school determine whether the ministry underwrites the cost of special learning supports? GAJE long ago pointed out this especially puzzling harshness by the government.

In the consultative run-up to the tabling by the provincial government of its upcoming budget, Cardus, the non-partisan think tank, has published seven recommendations for the Minister of Finance’s consideration. One of the recommendations is aimed at the Ministry of Education and focuses squarely upon this issue, namely, the “inequalities for special education funding”.

We reproduce Cardus’ recommendation in its entirety.

Ensure all students with special needs receive equal funding 

“The current provincial approach to special education funding unfairly disadvantages students who attend independent schools. Students with special needs only receive special education funding if they attend a public school. Unlike health funding which is based on a student’s needs and follows them regardless of school type, special education funding is limited based on the type of school the student attends.

“Cardus research from 2019 estimated the cost of extending special education funding to students in independent schools. Our model estimated the cost based on 75 and 50 percent of the per-student allocation for public schools. In these two scenarios, the cost ranged from approximately $52 million to $195 million depending on the funding level and the share of students who require the funding.

“The current approach unfairly penalizes the most vulnerable children in our communities. Ontario can correct this inequality by shifting special education funding from a school-based model to a student-centred model. This student-centred model would fully fund all students with special needs at the same level as their peers in public schools.

“For more details read Cardus’s report:

Funding Fairness for Students in Ontario with Special Education Needs.

Ontario has the means to correct this inequality. Indeed, Ontario has the means to correct and forever eliminate the over-arching inequality that underpins the educational funding it regards as inviolate because of its 1867 historical anchor. But it chooses not to.

•••

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)

March 3, 2023

Late last year, GAJE reported on the publication of a landmark study by Cardus, the public policy think tank, entitled Naturally Diverse: The Landscape of Independent Schools in Ontario.

The study provides an up-to-date, in-depth portrait of Ontario’s independent school scene. The report’s authors – David Hunt, Joanna DeJong VanHof and Jenisa Los – have provided the public and the policy makers at Queen’s Park the truth-seekers key that unlocks the chest of empirical data concerning independent schools in Ontario.

The information in Naturally Diverse is indispensable for formulating the very best public educational policy. It is indispensable for separating the truth about independent schools from the fictions that have negatively influenced the attitudes of editorial writers and government officials for so many years about the families who send their children to independent schools. The Cardus report can be found at:

https://www.cardus.ca/research/education/reports/naturally-diverse-the-landscape-of-independent-schools-in-ontario/

The authors demonstrate conclusively that independent schools are a multi-purpose, multi-faceted, multi-pedagogical tapestry of diverse families and students. They are definitively NOT a bastion of elite, top tier schools. Only 61 of Ontario’s 1,445 independent schools – 4.2%, or 16% of the students – are “top tier” schools, while religious school students account for 44% of students in independent schools.

The study is laden with eye-popping nuggets of information that, together, comprise the deep lode of important data. For example:

• Fully 25% of schools in Ontario are independent (1445+ as of 2020, prior to Covid).

• The number of independent schools has increased by 51.5% since 2013 (954 in 2013 to 1,445 in 2020, prior to COVID).

• It is estimated that 9.7% of Ontario students are currently educated outside of government-funded schools (Prior to COVID it was 7.4%).

• A majority of independent school parents earn average household incomes (ie. nurses, teachers, small business owners).

We ask the Ontario’s Minister of Education to look at the next five largest provinces in the country to see how they balance fiscal responsibility with achieving superior educational policy along with fundamental fairness and justice.

Parents of Ontario Indpendent School Students (POISS) enable all of us to do just that. POISS has compiled an infographic showing how Ontario’s support for independent schools compares with the five next biggest provinces. The source sheets for the information in the infographic are also available on the site https://parentsofontarioindependentschoolstudents.ca

The precise detail appears in the POISS infographics. But at a quick glance, it is illuminating and important to know that:

BC pays 35%-50% of the general per student allocation to students in qualifying schools;

Manitoba pays 50% of the general per student allocation to students in qualifying schools;

Quebec pays 60% of the general per student allocation to students to qualifying schools;

Alberta pays 70% of the general per student allocation to students to qualifying schools;

Saskatchewan pays 80% of the general per student allocation to students in qualifying schools.

Ontario, the largest and richest of the provinces, spends nothing for the benefit of the children who attend and/or need to attend independent schools. How is this anachronistic, harmful policy justified today? To the extent that the Ontario Ministry of Education bases its discriminaory educational funding policy on outdated, incorrect information and upon the myths of independent schools being elite schools, we plead with the minister to align his ministry’s funding policies with best educational policy practices and equally as important, with the dictates of conscience and basic fairness. The Government of Ontario should not ignore the educational needs of the 150,000 children attending independent schools. Nor should it support or prefer the educational needs of the students of one religion to the exclusion of the other religions in the province.

Ontario is a better place than this.

•••

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)

February 24, 2023

The Tikvah Foundation (Mosaic) published a remarkable essay last week that merits wide circulation and study. Written by Eric Cohen and Rabbi Mitchell Rocklin, the work is entitled, The Spirit of Jewish Classical Education. It is a marvellous collaborative effort, an intellectual tour de force. At its core, it is a history of ideas that shaped western civilization and culture from the first stirrings around the Mediterranean basin of humankind’s various curiosities and questioning of the ultimate nature and purpose of human existence.

Cohen is CEO of Tikvah and the publisher of Mosaic. He is also one of the founders of the new Lobel Center for Jewish Classical Education. Rabbi Rocklin is the academic director and dean of the new Lobel Center for Jewish Classical Education. He is also director of the Jewish classical education concentration track at the University of Dallas.

The essay is some 18-pages long. It invites serious examination. For this reader, it also evoked a sense of head-nodding inspiration.

Through numerous examples and careful marshalling of the facts and layering of history, the authors assert that Jewish teachings have shaped Western civilization in vital ways from the beginning. Not only did Jewish teachings shape Western civilization, they maintain, but that those very teachings were vital to the evolution of our society as we know it today. The authors identify those teachings, the proponents through the ages and they explain their larger impact.

Finally, they plead for a return to meaningful Jewish classical education today for the sake of the Jewish community as well as for the sake of larger Western civilization. (Our emphasis) Their conclusions are quite head-turning.

We quote merely a few truncated passages from the essay to enable readers to taste a bit its meaning for us.

“In their confrontation with Christian civilization and eventually with the post-Enlightenment world, the architects of Jewish learning sought to pursue three goals at once. They developed a unique Jewish approach to education.

“The first purpose of Jewish education was Jewish resistance against assimilation: resistance to paganism, resistance to the high pagan culture of Greece and Rome, resistance to embracing Christianity as the potential ticket (in Heinrich Heine’s famous phrasing) to the intellectual, cultural, and economic riches of the Christian world. The rabbinic system thus focused on the inculcation of Jewish law, the mastery of Jewish ritual, and the observance of the Jewish calendar. Learning Talmud became the highest possible intellectual pursuit. This allowed Jews—even in poverty and exile—to understand themselves as aristocrats of mind and spirit. It also allowed the Jews to continue their role as sacrificial partners with a covenantal God—embodied in the physical acts of Jewish ritual life—de- spite outside insistence that such practices were peculiar, parochial, and unnecessary.

“The second purpose of Jewish education was integration of the discoveries, insights, and achievements of Greco-Roman (and eventually Christian) culture in a uniquely Jewish way. Jews could not ignore Western achievements in natural science, medicine, architecture, art, literature, and political economy. These novel human accomplishments and insights thus needed to be incorporated—both practically and theoretically—into the Jewish vision of life.

“The third purpose of Jewish education was to make a uniquely Jewish contribution to the West itself: to see the Israelites as a moral and metaphysical light to the nations, whose core ideas might influence the ultimate direction and meaning of the Western story and thus the human story. This includes offering Hebraic remedies for Greco-Roman disorders; and providing “Old Testament” wisdom when the Christian (or post-Christian) world goes astray.

“Holding these three purposes together was—and remains—no easy challenge, and the relative urgency and weight of each distinct purpose necessarily changed from age to age and place to place. Yet the ideal form of Jewish education—past, present, and future—aimed to advance all three purposes at once: resisting anti-Jewish ideas in the name of Judaism, integrating the best of Western developments into the Jewish way of life, and contributing Jewish wisdom to Western culture. This was—and remains— the guiding spirit of Jewish classical education.”

The authors prescribe the wide possibilities for a Jewish classical education. They also call to the Jewish people to reject the polarity of models of either living as Assimilated Jew or as an Isolationist Jew. 

“In radically different ways, the Assimilated Jew and the Isolationist Jew both declare that Western civilization is not their problem: the Assimilated Jew falsely takes Western “progress” for granted; the (Isolationist) Yeshiva Jew falsely sees Western decadence as inevitable; and neither takes any Jewish responsibility for the very Western culture that the Israelites helped create. (Our emphasis)

What then, is the authors’ proposal as an alternative for Jewish life and education today?

“Let us celebrate, instead, the Menorah Jew, who proudly seeks to help renew the West by shining a Jewish light in the modern age: one teacher, one classroom, one Jewish day school at a time. For whether we accept it or not, the Jews will never be a normal nation. We have an exceptional place in the human story. As the Jewish intellectual Milton Himmelfarb famously quipped, the Jews are no bigger than a rounding error in the Chinese census, and yet we always find ourselves at the center of the hu- man drama. And so, we will either prepare the rising generation of Jews to navigate the Western world—and to help save the woke West from canceling itself—or we will send our Jewish boys and girls down the lesser paths of assimilation or isolation. The heroes in this story—as in so many eras of Jewish history—will be the school-builders.”

The authors conclude by quoting Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch who lived in 19^th century Germany. Cohen and Rockling referred to him as ‘the most significant modern example of Jewish classical education in recent times.”

 “If ever a cause required the clarity of profound insight, the eloquence of deep-felt conviction and the impetus of ardent zeal, if ever there was a cause for which we would rouse all those hearts that can still be moved to genuine feeling for the sacred heritage of Judaism, then it most certainly is that of education—Jewish education.

“Create schools! Improve the schools you already have!” This is the call we would pass from hamlet to hamlet, from village to village, from city to city; it is the appeal to the hearts, the minds and the conscience of our Jewish brethren, pleading with them to champion that most sacred of causes—the cause of thousands of unhappy Jewish souls who are in need of schools, better Jewish schools, for their rebirth as Jews.”

In light of the passage that the authors chose to conclude their impressive work, it will surprise no-one that GAJE commends the authors and recommends their essay for wide reading.

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The Cohen and Rocklin essay is available at:

https://tikvahfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/The-Spirit-of-Jewish-Classical-Education-—-Cohen-—-Final-1.pdf?utm_source=tikvah%20lists&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Cohen%20Rocklin%20Mosaic%20Essay%20Email_General&_kx=Ubio10ClKtvSZLiQwOtIdpJf_E929iRLF3M-vd1PwSw%3D.LFdrfw

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Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

February 17, 2023