Stiff Necked Opposition
In Part I, I reviewed an excellent article by Elliot Pasik "Resolving the Yeshiva Tuition Crisis." In this article, Mr. Pasik proposes a central address where donations, especially large donations, can be received to benefit Yeshivot and day schools. For many reasons I believe that this idea is not only an excellent one for the reasons I addressed, but I believe it is a necessary idea if Orthodox schools intend to attract major donations. A fund that is run by competent professionals with transparency and integrity has the potential to with attract large donations as well as the donations of people who are not closely connected to a specific school. The funds would be much more secure as individual schools would not have the potential to "borrow" against restricted funds. A fund would bring creative and innovative ideas to the forefront, making Orthodox education a concern of the entire community rather than individual schools. Lastly, large fund generate larger returns. Small and non-existent funds that were spent yesterday cannot generate anything.
One of my readers opposes the idea stating:
"I have to say, I'm not sure I wholly agree. There are several day schools and yeshivot in my "out of town" community. There's a community day school that has more money than they know what to do with. There's the mod orthodox school where my kids go, and there's the yeshiva. I don't want to split my limited $$ to go to schools with which I fundamentally disagree, on either side of the spectrum. I want to support my school. It's not so much selfishness, as it is disagreement with the other schools. Coeducation is important in my family, so I don't want to support a non-coed school. Orthodox education is important, so I don't want to support the non-Orthodox school."
It seems that there is a misunderstanding as to what a central fund is and what it is not. The proposed idea is a fund for Orthodox schools. A central fund is not meant to divert donations that a particular parent or a particular community member wants to direct to a particular school. A central fund is meant to collect funds from people who want to donate to Orthodox education, but who do not have a particular "pet" school or who do not want to limit their donations to one particular school. In addition, the fund is needed because many donors of significant means want to ensure that the funds donated are treated with the fiduciary duty that they should be treated with. The bottom line is that individual schools do not usually have this capability, nor do they have the fiscal know how required to grow funds. **You wouldn't give your hard earned money to a Rosh Yeshiva to invest because he has neither the time nor the expertise to do so. So, why would you give large sums of money to an individual school that you know does not have the time or expertise for investing? **
The other subject of only supporting what one agrees with 100% that I figured would (sadly) come up sooner or later. The pessimistic side of my personality often says, why even bother trying to get involved in tuition issues. Eventually Jewish education will collapse on itself because the Jewish people are a "stiff-necked" people and are unwilling to bend and compromise even when their own pocketbooks and the future of their own grandchildrens' education is at risk. They are unwilling to work for the greater good if it does not meet the exact specifications that they deem as worthy. Achdus died long ago and we are a fragmented people. We can't even agree on basic issues, how are we ever going to even make a dent in a huge issue?
Mr. Pasik's article is full of great ideas that are solid from a communal and an economic standpoint. But, from the moment I read the article, I said to myself that despite the solid ideas it seems like a far off pipe-dream to institute common sense ideas because we just don't seem to be able to see the big picture. Readers, I'm calling on you to see the big picture and hopefully prove to me that there is hope for the future of Jewish education and that the future is a bit brighter than it seems to look in my current pessimistic state.
I know I have readers since I have a site meter. Please add your comments.
6 comments:
SephardiLady,
That comment was mine. I stand corrected by what you wrote. I thought the idea was to do away with directed funding to a particular school. Ok, I'm on board, although it strikes me that it will/can cannibalize existing donations to particular schools.
I shold also clarify that, as the administrator of my shul's tzedakah fund, we've made sure to support the scholarship funds of all the Ortho schools in our area, even ones where I personally may disagree with the hashkafa.
jdub
Although I can see the value of a united fund, I don't see how it will help the situation of individual schools. Presumably, the donations to such a fund will create an endowment, and the interest will be used to fund schools. But even with a huge endowment (let's say 100 Million), and assuming a 10% return (10 Million), how will that money be divided up amonng the many, many schools in the US. Would it be used for operating expenses. Would it be used to provide scholarships for students who can't afford to attend and would otherwise be in public school?
I have no idea how many kids are currently in yeshiva in the US, but I would guess that the number would have to be at least 20,000. That would only be $500 per student. That would relieve some burden, absolutely, but it would certainly not solve the tuition crisis, especially when there are many schools that charge upwards of 15K per year.
Thanks for picking a name jdub. Interesting comments. I'm sure that this subject will come up many more times on this blog.
I just wanted to mention, however, that any schools that do receive funding should IMO, be subject to some requirements including, but not limited to:
*Fiscal transparency
*Transparent and reasonable salary scales
*Enrollment requirements
*Fair hiring practices (i.e. neopotism is not a "fair" hiring practice).
Keep coming back jdub.
Anon-Great comment. I have some ideas on how a United Fund should be administrated. I will save my ideas for a different post.
I hope you will come back once I formulate the ideas. Some of them are above.
To me, the bigger issue is convincing people to support Jewish education at all.
Case in point: We were approached by a friend to contribute about $2600 to our Ortho day school per year over and above tuition. He explained that we needed to distinguish between what we pay to the school as a vendor of services (i.e., tuition) and supporting the school as a recipient of tzedakah. We had been prepared to say "but we pay $15,000 in tuition already" but his argument made so much sense to us (and he's the father of a close friend) that we had to agree.
Other friends of ours -- who happen to be in better financial shape than us -- refuse to give one cent to the school on the ground that they are already paying tuition and that's tzedakah enough. That's well and good, but our school, like many schools, are in the red without contributions.
It convinced me that I will continue to support my kids' school, long after they graduate, as long as I am financially able to do so. Jewish education is the single best bulwark against assimilation.
Good point JDub. It is difficult to get people to support Jewish education at all.
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