Blog Roundup: May 23, 2006

I have so many topics I plan to post on, and no concept of what order I want to post them in. So, in the meantime, I will just point my readers to some interesting discussions going on in the j-blogsphere. (Note: I do not agree with all conclusions or the comments, but think these are good reads).

And, very soon, I will put up a post on a new subject.

Sexual Abuse:

Gil Student has added a post called "Protecting Our Children, Protecting Our Teachers." The title is extremely similar to the title of my last post, "Protecting Our Children, Protecting Ourselves," and we share a similar approach that our discussion should revolve around protection, not the most recent case in the limelight. However, I had some discomfort with some of the underlying assumptions and premises of Gil's post, and it seems that Steven I. Weiss has addressed some of those concerns, mainly the assumption that we can self-police, something that I think is near impossible for the frum community to do and something that both the Agudah and Torah U'Mesorah seem to oppose based on their opposition to certain legislation. SerandEz follows up with a critique of Canonist's post which too has valid points. Put these three posts together and it leaves a lot of important things to think about!

Jewish Student and RenReb takes a look at the fact that we all too often don't educate our children at all about sexual abuse, which, in my opinion, is a necessary piece of the puzzle.

Daas Heydot also has a great post on the subject.

OntheMainLine points out some comments from a principal of a school of 1400, Paul Shaviv, on the issue of the charismatic leader and which are extremely interesting and are related to the topic at hand.

Bullying

Orthomom has a post about bullying that is important. Like sexual abuse, bullying is a problem across all societies and it hurts a lot of children unnecessarily in its wake.

Tuition Issues

Orthomom has a post on a local school raising tuition-12%!- unexpectedly (after people have decided for the most part on the school for their children for the next year), and then giving discounts based on assumptions by the board, a complete haphazard process.

MOChassid points out that administrative staff costs and fiscal transparency are red herrings in the tuition discussion. The first post in the latter about combining resources and going after large donations is a must read. Note: I think that more transparency is needed, mostly to increase trust, as I don't think there is a whole lot of waste going on.

Jewish501c3 has a post entitled "Redundancy, not tuition, is conquering all." This post is really up my ally. It addresses the lack of cooperation and the lack of forward thinking that is all too prevalent when the topic of Yeshiva funding comes up. Check it out!

OutofTown has a list of her own tuition suggestions, and a discussion about sending tuition to collections in the comments section.

JH of JewishPros follows up that discussion with two posts of his own: No Child Left Behind is a response to OutofTown's post. Another post looks at Collections and Billings.

And, here is an interesting and developing discussion on BeyondBT that combines shidduch issues and financial realities. I believe this discussion is pertinent to all frum Jews, not just BT's.

I'll be back soon with some new posts.