When GAJE was formed nearly three years ago, we were among the first concerned individuals to attempt to focus community discussion on the utter lack of affordability of the cost of Jewish education. Today that discussion has been joined from all points in North America.

From time to time we showcase other voices that are raising the same concern about affordability. We do so again in this week’s update.

Alisha Abboudi is the Director of Philanthropy at Politz Day School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She published an article that appeared earlier this week on the jEducation website, entitled The High Cost of Jewish Continuity: Affording a Jewish Day School Education. Abboudi brings her New Jersey perspective to the affordability discussion. Not surprisingly, her perspective shares many sight lines with the perspective from the GTA.

Below are excerpts of her article.
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“Population surveys and demographic studies of the past thirty years show that effective Jewish education is the single best vehicle to ensure Jewish continuity – the idea that Judaism’s values and heritage will continue to pass from generation to generation by those identifying as Jewish, regardless of denomination. As the great Talmudist Adin Steinsaltz said, “a Jew is not someone whose grandparents are Jewish but someone who wants his or her grandchildren to be Jewish.”

The good news: population surveys and demographic studies have identified Jewish education as the key to Jewish continuity. The bad news? Just as many studies have shown that mounting day school tuition costs are not sustainable. Combined with a low value proposition, high tuition has made day school the least likely choice for most American Jews….

“Regardless of size or denomination, all day schools today share ongoing financial worries. Most experience shortfalls due to the added expenses of a dual curriculum, longer school day, larger faculty, security expenses, and higher administrative costs, to name just a few…

So, what happens now? With the very real threats facing day schools, communal organizations have mobilized once again, with an eye on creating viable and long-term structural changes. Several interventions have recently emerged: a focus on enrolment growth, tuition pricing and middle income affordability initiatives, fundraising and endowment building, advocacy for government funding, cost cutting via school collaborations and communal funding initiatives, and new education models such as blended learning.

“While compelling arguments can be made for all of these initiatives, I firmly believe that a focus on securing government funding should be at the forefront. At the very least, we should be having a more intentional and meaningful conversation within the greater Jewish community regarding public funding for private schools.
“… A solution can and must be found to keep day schools not only open but accessible to middle income families and those who are ambivalent about their Judaism. Otherwise, this effective, transformative, and necessary tool in perpetuating Jewish continuity will only be available to the most dedicated or most wealthy families.”

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We share Ms. Abboudi’s resolve to find a solution to ensure day schools are truly accessible to middle income families. And we also share her resolve that government – in this case, Ontario – should fund some of the cost the education in the day schools, at least a portion of the general studies curriculum. Five other provinces in Canada do precisely that. Why cannot Ontario do the same?

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

It appears beyond doubt that more affordable day school tuition leads to more enrolment in the schools (see last week’s update). Now it is imperative for community leaders, teachers, students, parents, grandparents, education enthusiasts and everyone else who recognize the connection between Jewish literacy and Jewish peoplehood, to boost the excellence and importance of a day school education.

Lucky for us, three weeks ago, Dr. Erica Brown, one of the world’s pre-eminent Jewish studies educators. wrote “The case for day schools”. The article is both paean and plea. She pays tribute to a day school education and urges parents to consider day schools for their children. And she uses her own experience as the basis of her argument.

Dr. Brown tells her readers that she entered day school at 16. “I could barely write my name in Hebrew.” By the end of her day school education however, Dr. Brown’s ability with Hebrew and with related Hebrew study were well established.

Her praise for day school education is on pragmatic and substantive grounds. The following is excerpted from her article.

“We have research from Brandeis University’s Cohen Center that day school graduates achieve among the highest levels of academic success. Central to that is the confidence these schools instil in their students to handle a serious workload. We talk a lot about resilience in education. Look at the stamina of day school students. They come early, leave late, balance a dual curriculum, and heap on extra-curricular activities.

“Day school exposed me to a Jewish life that was sophisticated, embracing and challenging.

“Day school also gave me a treasured group of friends, decent human beings who cared about each other and now care about the world.

“The Cohen Center study above demonstrated that day school graduates in college were less likely to engage in risky behaviour, and after college were more likely to volunteer, to find careers that helped people, and to devote themselves in and outside of work to making a difference in society.

“Day schools offer living wisdom and a soul-stretching education I couldn’t find where I was. Prep school prepared me well for individual achievement. But day school gave me my first-ever community. It taught me to live responsibly in an I-Thou space. It’s no surprise that research done by the Avi Chai Foundation showed an over-representation of day school graduates in leadership positions. When Jewish organizations need leaders, chances are they’ll be filling slots with day school graduates.

“Discerning parents realize that day school deserves a fair hearing. You might find, as I did, that no single decision has done more to craft a life of meaning for a family. The best case for day school is not what it delivers short-term. It’s the life it delivers long after graduation.”

Dr. Brown is immensely qualified to state the case for Jewish Day Schools. The author of 11 books and frequent contributor to journals and newspapers, she is an award-winning educator, associate professor at George Washington University and the director of its Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership.

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Dr. Brown is the most recent high-profile, experienced, knowledgeable, caring educator to advocate on behalf of a day school education. Its benefits and its promise are eternal. Now the community must do its utmost, leaving no stone––through philanthropy and advocacy––to make day school education affordable.

Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

In the marginally quieter days of the December holiday period, some members of our community may have missed an important news item that appeared in Dec. 20 edition of The Canadian Jewish News. Under the headline TanenbaumCHAT Day School sees increased enrolment after tuition cut, veteran CJN reporter Lila Sarick wrote that the high school has seen a major increase in Grade 9 enrolment applications from 200 this year to about 300 for the academic year 2018-19. This constitutes a 50 percent increase in one year!

There can be no doubt that the reason for this heartening jump was the intervention of community-minded, Jewish-future-caring, generous philanthropists whose $14 million gift to the school enabled the tuition to be reduced by nearly $10,000 per year per student for the next five years.

Not surprisingly, the school administration is excited about the enrolment development for next year. “All of North America is watching this and we think parents are responding, that they want a Jewish education for their children and this is making it more accessible for them. The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” Jonathan Levy, TanenbaumCHAT’s head of school said.

And we should be excited too. For the theory is no longer a theory. It is now proven. Tuition is indeed a determining factor in families’ sending their children to day school.

To be sure, the tuition per child per year – namely $18,500 – is still bitingly difficult and a severe hardship for many families, especially those with multiple children in the day school system. But the proof is in. Families will do their utmost to enable their children to receive a Jewish education if only the cost can be made bearable. Indeed when all the costs of running a Jewish household for a multiple-child family in our community are tallied, there can be no higher demonstration of a family’s commitment to a school or to our community. The resulting ongoing, tuition-anchored, financial struggle is their commitment to the community. It is foremost of course, their commitment to their children and to their forebears. It is not an overstatement to say that we owe these families a debt of gratitude for sending their children through Jewish education – despite the hardship.

If only we could now convince other community-minded, Jewish-future-caring, generous philanthropists to step forward to help radically reduce tuition for the community’s day schools, more children would become students there. A special fund – The Jewish Tuition Assistance Fund – has been established at the Jewish Foundation of Greater Toronto expressly for the purpose of making Jewish education affordable for the vast majority of families in our community. Can there be more poignant and compelling proof that donations to this fund will make a permanent, positive difference to the future of our community. Can one imagine the even further climb in enrolment in our schools if tuition costs for middle class families were lowered by an additional $10,000 in elementary and/or high school?

Not long ago, GAJE wrote about Eli Horn, a rare Jewish philanthropist in Brazil who decided to dedicate the bulk of his wealth to Jewish education there. Where is our community’s Eli Horn? Where is a consortium of philanthropists who together could achieve what Horn has done for his community in Brazil?

To paraphrase our Sages, “the work is great and the time short and the Master is knocking…” We have no time to lose. We know what works. Where are our philanthropists?

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

The New Year brings new hope and new resolve. Always and everywhere.

So too at GAJE.

Having assessed information and conclusions from countless conversations, discussions, research and studies, the Funding Committee is now working on bringing forward previously untried methods for making tuition affordable to the vast middle economic band of families. Thus, GAJE hopes to announce this year a new approach to enabling every family in our community that wishes to enrol their children in Jewish education.

Through the generosity and commitment of a civic-minded individual in our community, the Legal Committee retained the services of one of the country’s preeminent human rights experts to assess the feasibility of “re-opening” the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision (Adler) in 1996 that ruled Ontario’s educational funding policies to be constitutional. Our counsel submitted a legal opinion in which he concluded: “There is merit in a request for reconsideration of the Adler decision.”

In addition, we know that the conversation about the immunity from adopting a just and fair educational funding policy granted to Ontario by the Adler decision is now also being discussed among legal scholars, teachers and students. They too are asking if “Adler” is still good law? GAJE contends that it is not. A great deal – law, social attitudes, and educational practices in the rest of the country – has changed in the intervening 22 years.

GAJE also contends that if the government of Ontario will not of its own inclination to do the right thing change its funding policy to accord with fairness and justice and Canada-wide practice, we must once again turn to the courts to compel Ontario to do so.

In the December 28 edition of The Canadian Jewish News, Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl elegantly and succinctly reminded us of our core human responsibility regarding the permanence of our people.

“The future of the Jewish people is based on Jewish education… While the transmission of Torah was originally the responsibility of the family, as a system of study developed, it required funding by patrons or taxation.”

With Jewish education as his laser, locked in focus, Rabbi Frydman-Kohl explained a quizzical aspect of the blessings conferred by Jacob and Moses upon Zebulun and Issachar. Rabbi Frydman-Kohl states that Jacob and Moses had in mind the eternal importance of sustaining a communal system of education. “The Issachar/Zebulun (student/business person) partnership venerated those who supported Jewish education.”

GAJE’s lawyer has offered to conduct the legal challenge to the “Adler case” from trial through appeals for a deeply discounted fee. We must now hope more civic-minded individuals – the “Zebuluns” in the community – step forward to help further engage our lawyer to carry the case forward to its ultimate resolution.

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

With the last GAJE update of 2017, we wish to draw the Government of Ontario’s attention to the attitudes of Canadians toward government funding of independent religious schools.

According to a recent study conducted by the think tank Cardus and the Angus Reid Institute, some 61 per cent of Canadians support full or partial government funding for independent religious schools.

The chief conclusion of the study was encapsulated in the headline “Canadians are clear. They prefer a diversity of options for educating our children.” This majority preference also sits well with research that points to the benefits of a diversity of educational options. A multiplicity of educational offerings creates competition within the overall provincial system and this, in turn, raises the standard throughout and especially in the public sector.

One of the highlights of the study speaks to and directly refutes a recurring argument against public funding – partial or full – for independent religious schools, namely, that such funding threatens the public system and therefore too the inclusive, tolerant, cooperative, multi-cultural functioning of our society spawned by a healthy public school system. Yet, the study found that “religious school graduates…exhibit a wide variety of civic contributions. Compared to public school graduates, for example, they donate more money, are more likely to volunteer for arts and cultural organization, are more willing to give blood, and are as likely to be politically active as their public school peers.”

The article reported that “five provinces also provide funding for religious schools in the independent school sector: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec… Funding for independent schools doesn’t cover costs for capital such as buildings and land, but it does match anywhere from 35 to 80 percent of what is offered, on average, to a local public school for the education of a student.” (Our emphasis)

The Fraser Institute has compared the maths-and-sciences outcomes of students in British Columbia and in Ontario. BC students outperformed their Ontario counterparts. (One of those studies was cited in a previous GAJE update.)

Is Ontario less financially able than our five sister provinces to partially fund independent religious schools, say from 35 to 80 per cent of what is offered to a local public school for the education of a student? We think not.

Therefore, let us state the obvious. It is simply a matter of political will.

There is no political will in the current Government of Ontario to adopt at least some measure of fairness and justice in educational funding in Ontario – even though it appears that more than 60 percent of the population are in favour. Perhaps Ontario could catch up to the majority?

The study was reported in the Dec. 14 edition of the National Post.

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

It is no exaggeration to write that the lives of most of the members of the Jewish community of the GTA in one way or another have been enhanced by the magnanimity and goodness of the late Honey and Barry Sherman. One need not have personally known them to have benefited by their unceasing concern for the welfare of others and for the wellbeing of communities in Canada, Israel and around the world. Such was the extent of their caring.

Family and friends are still grieving.

An entire world of individuals here and abroad is traumatized.

We dedicate this week’s update to Honey and Barry Sherman. In their large, undaunted and effusive way, they strove to ensure the strength, diversity and permanence of the Jewish community.

GAJE, in its way, strives toward the very same end.

The memories of Honey and Barry Sherman will surely be for blessing. Amen.

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

What success can we claim when Jewish education in our community becomes truly affordable, if that education is not itself excellent?

Thankfully, in the GTA, Jewish education is indeed excellent within the still available wide offerings throughout the day school system.

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz, President & Dean of the Valley Beit Midrash, in Phoenix, Arizona, a renowned activist for Jewish affairs and concerns and the author of twelve books on Jewish ethics, adds an important element to ensuring the excellence and permanence of Jewish education that is to be found outside the walls of the classroom.

In an article entitled, Why Jewish Education Fails, Rabbi Yanklowitz asserts very boldly what many probably assume but seldom articulate: “To be sure, formal education will have little to no value if we avoid the primary influence on our children: Ourselves.”

Rabbi Yanklowitz powerfully reminds us that education – in the fullest sense of the term – is not merely a service paid for by parents confined to the institution we call school. He provides a quick – albeit cursory – review of socio-educational literature that points indisputably to the inescapable influence of parents and of the dynamics within the home upon the child’s long-lasting development, acquisition of knowledge and formation of character.

Rabbi Yanklowitz is succinct and precise. “One can invest in every quality program in these [educational] fields but can squander the investment entirely if one’s home is not cultivated in values pertaining to the best of the Jewish experience. If educational priorities are only focused on material objects – food, athletic sponsorships, or the latest tech, for example – then the timeless values that should take precedence elapse into irrelevancy.

His words are an important reminder to us.

Our respective roles and obligation as parents, grandparents or simply caring community-minded individuals in helping bring Jewish education within reach of young Jewish families does not end with ensuring its affordability. Indeed, perhaps that is but the beginning?

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

Some two and a half years ago, our volunteer, grassroots organization (GAJE) was formed out of a deeply held conviction that it was finally time to solve the crisis of increasingly unaffordable day school tuitions.

As much as the group that formed GAJE chose to take action, it appears that the times may have also chosen the group. For it is now plainly evident that around the same time as GAJE formed in the GTA, the subject of day school affordability became a first-order priority for volunteers and professionals in Jewish communities throughout North America.

Last week an article entitled Five Things Jewish Day Schools Are Doing To Lower Tuition Costs, written by E.J. Kessler and sponsored by the Avi Chai Foundation, was published by the JTA. The information in the article is instructive. It bears noting however that all of the approaches Kessler lists are currently being considered, in one form or another, in the GTA.

The large subsidiary point of the article however is that Jewish communities in North America are finally tackling the problem. Individually and collectively they are effectively declaring: “The situation is at a crisis level. Because it is, we must find answers. The view that there are no answers has no precedent in Jewish history. Thus, we will find a way or multiple ways to make Jewish education affordable.”

This is the key message of the article to be celebrated.

But there are some important nuggets of reason and purpose in Kessler’s story. For example:

“Schools understand that if families can’t afford to pay, they will lose them or they won’t get them to begin with,” said Daniel Perla, senior director for financial vitality at Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, which works with schools across North America to promote educational excellence and financial stability.

“Knowledgeable community leaders understand the high return that Jewish day schools provide by graduating Jewishly literate, passionate, proud, highly educated, socially conscious Jews,” wrote Harry Bloom, senior vice president of Measuring Success, which helps independent schools, foundations and not-for-profits with quantitative research.

“Easing the financial burden of those choosing a Jewish day school education,” said Jay Tcath, Executive Vice-President of Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, “is a priority for our federation and the best long-term investment we can make for an educated Jewish future.”

Kessler will have the last word here: “Ultimately, say those working to support Jewish day schools, reducing the financial burden of tuition is a Jewish imperative.”

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

Recent correspondence to The Canadian Jewish News (Nov. 23, 2017) in response to an opinion column by Mordechai Ben-Dat, one of GAJE’s founding members, suggests that the principles by which conducts itself and the purposes for which GAJE stands need to be restated.

• GAJE is unreservedly in favour of all forms of Jewish education – formal and informal – including after- school supplementary programing and summer camp. The education of our children in and about their heritage has been both the North Star and the anchor by which our people has never lost its direction or drifted away during the many difficult storms in Jewish history. Families ought to choose the form of education that best suits them and their way of life.

• Study after study, however, has empirically proven that the best – though not the only – way to ensure that our children will live committed, caring, Jewish lives is through intense, quality education, namely day school. At this juncture in our history, alas, day school education is increasingly and one can add, inexcusably, beyond the reach of most middle families.

• Our deeply held belief is that assuring access to Jewish education to all Jewish children whose families wish such an education for their children is one of the pre-eminent obligations of community leadership and infrastructure. This belief is in keeping with the past practices of our community’s leadership and most important, with the traditions, teachings and sense of peoplehood that our sages established since the very first days of organized Jewish communal life.

• Indeed, the mission of the Federation attests to the validity of this belief. GAJE supports the Federation’s broad community mandate. GAJE cooperates with the Federation. However, to help bring Jewish education within the reach of more families, GAJE has urged the Federation to try to take some form of central control of the education system.

• One of the reasons that the cost of Jewish education in Ontario is much higher than in other Canadian provinces where day schools exist is because of the entrenched discriminatory, unfair, unjust educational funding policies of the government of Ontario.
GAJE believes this active, ongoing discrimination by the government of Ontario – though legal – is utterly unconscionable. We wish to drive home the fact that adopting fair funding does not undermine the pubic school system. In fact, evidence is to the contrary. Fair funding would strengthen the overall educational outcomes throughout Ontario. It would also place Ontario’s policy in line with good conscience and justice as the other provinces have done.

• Given the moral strength of the Jewish people throughout our history, our constant resistance to seemingly overwhelming odds, and our unceasing refusal to say “this cannot be done”, it strains credibility to simply give up on the struggle to make day school education affordable.

• We need people – the young and the old, men and women, parents and grandparents, students and graduates, innovators and conservators – to come up with the big, new idea or ideas that will ensure that the Jewish day school system will thrive in perpetuity. The sums of money are surprisingly not so vast that they are beyond the ability of our community to raise.

• The threat to the current system is real. Maintaining the status quo in the approach to Jewish education will merely evolve into the slow, sad, monitoring of the death of the vibrant, diverse, excellent day school system that has been the hallmark of our community. And without such a day school system, there will be a vastly different, hollowed out, community structure in the future, less able and even less willing – God forbid – to tend with dignity and respect, to the many valid, important needs of the community.

• The Federation understands this as well. That is why it is actively seeking ways to ensure the viability of the day school system. And that is why GAJE is determined to help bring about affordable Jewish education.

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE