Had one of those conversations again.

The one about affording day school education.

There are just so many difficult nuances to all of this.

I, at one time, sat on a tuition committee.

We’d weigh a family’s request for tuition reduction. We’d ask for full financial disclosure, check important financial documents and then do what we could do to fulfill the mandate of educating every Jewish child Jewishly.

There would be that instance when someone would submit an application and yes, there would be that trip to Florida that acted as a red flag to their request.

Then there was the family where the parents were both working full time and part-time jobs and would request just something to make the tuition more affordable.

The nuances have broadened.

A couple earns six figures, but they have three or more children in yeshiva or day school. They have a comfortable home. Okay, so they are holding on to their cars longer than they have in the past. The kids go to camp, and they do take a week’s vacation, because let’s face it, we all need some sort of respite some time.

So now in this paradigm, this family could very well ask for tuition reduction. Why shouldn’t they? Or better phrased, why should they be penalized for having a nice house, two cars and a vacation?

See, this is relatively new to the paradigm. Upper middle class incomes not being able to fully afford tuition?

In many cases, these people are afraid to even ask for the scholarship form. It could be embarrassing and they aren’t really seen as people in need
We need to blow up that paradigm.

You and I don’t know what’s going on in the lives of people who live in any of these houses. There could be unemployment. There could be furlough days. Salaries based on commissions could be down. There are plenty of fathers, and yes mothers, waking up in the middle of the night worrying about how they are going to keep the lights on, not to mention their kids in school. Sometimes the person asleep by their side doesn’t even know the extent of the family’s financial issues.

Parents look at children with guilt, and worry. Bar and bat mitzvahs have to be paid for, weddings, Jewish holidays.

It doesn’t make sense to blame the day schools or yeshivas if they are asking us to pay tuition. How can they possibly survive without tuition?
I don’t think the Associated during this time in our economic crisis, is the place to go with hands out either. The Associated is working from the other end, in many cases, providing job counseling, emergency survival assistance, therapy, and even avenues of foreclosure avoidance.

So without any reluctance, I’m going to bring this up again.

We’ve got public schools in the middle of the Jewish neighborhoods. They will teach your children AP English, get kids ready for the SAT, and college applications,  provide special education services, speech therapy, college prep, phys ed and vocational tech. If you own a home, you are paying for this anyway.

Why don’t we use it?

Is it because we’re afraid of the worldliness of these schools? Are we afraid to mix our Jewish children with Christians, with Muslims, with kids of different races?

Yeah, I think we are.

I think it’s visceral and I think it’s prejudicial.

What I really think is that’s it’s a bad decision, and a costly one.

When many older generation Jews left Park Heights and moved to Pikesville or Owings Mills, a solid core of Orthodox families moved in. CHAI and the Associated helped facilitate the Jewish rebirth of these areas. City services and County services know who lives in these neighborhoods.

But it took a faith, a belief by the early “pioneers” of the CHAI programming to bring people into the neighborhoods and actually create a viable presence. We had streets that were left behind by Jewish people now vibrant with Jewish life.

We have Cross Country Elementary School and Fallstaff and Northwestern and Pikesville Middle and Senior High School. There’s Wellwood and Summit Park.

We have Jewish private schools, some perhaps on the brink of financial insolvency.

Why do we pressure these schools? Why do we keep going back to an already overly stressed Jewish community system and ask it for yet more, more money. It’s like a shark with an insatiable appetite.

We moved into neighborhoods given up for dead Jewishly, and we created Jewish neighborhoods. That, in itself, took risk and commitment.

A critical mass of Jewish families willing to place their children in some sort of workable modality for secular education only in the public schools would save millions of dollars. It could keep Jewish private schools alive, because they would be doing what they do best, offering the Jewish side of education.

The public schools, with a critical mass of Jewish families involved, could offer such positive potential, such possibilities.

We tell the story so often of the man who was drowning, and how God sent him a helicopter with a ladder and a life raft, but the man refused to take the help. And then the man asked God why he didn’t save him? God said, “I tried. I sent you a helicopter, a ladder and a life raft”
We have these buildings, these educational facilities right here in our own neighborhoods.

We have a critical mass of families who just like they saved and changed the very streets they live could save and change the public schools in their neighborhoods.

We are in a box of financial despair. Our schools aren’t equipped to handle the depth of this recession. The definition of Jews in financial need has gotten bigger and broader.

Let our wonderful day schools and yeshivas teach Jewish subjects to the children in a less financially pressured environment.

Let’s let our local public school facilities, educators, special educators, college preparatory teachers and guidance counselors take care of the secular studies.

It’s free.

It’s there to be used.

Use these facilities.

Or don’t complain.

The fact is that the model that has been the Jewish Communities approach to education has never worked. It has always been based on families that could afford the astronomical tuitions paying for the families that couldn’t and today at least half if not the majority cannot afford it.  The future of a dual curriculum Yeshiva education is being threatened and its going to take some out of the box thinking to save it.  A couple of great examples are the Hebrew Charter school which will be opening up in Bergen County and the low cost Yeshiva model.

I think its easy for you to say.  Your children are grown and have had the education you wanted.  Going to public today is not the same as when we were growing up.  Also would you feel comfortable sending your child to Northwestern?  NOT ME

You don’t need to look to hard to prove that this half-and-half scheme is wishful thinking. The Associated has studies that show the greatest predictor of a child staying Jewish is having both parents being Jewish. I say that it’s not a stretch to say that a strong predictor to making sure a child grows up to be a committed, practicing Jew is to be immersed with his/her peers for the full school day.

Claiming that having done this somewhat successfully in the past validates the present ignores the difference in the mores and situations of the times. Jewish day schools were not as prevalent and the Jewish community infrastructure was not as extensive. Immigrants were struggling to survive. There was still a strong expectation of following the traditions and attending synagogue. The secular world has become cruder, and more accessible through the Internet. Porn and scripture can be retrieved with the same ease.

The Conservative movement was an attempt to meld American assimilation and religious practice. We can see how successful that has been to creating observant, practicing Jews. What is the intermarriage rate?

Some of the most pious people I knew, my mother included, had an after-school Talmud Torah education.  But they were the exception, rather than the rule.  The majority of their friends, although they were from almost equally religious families, ultimately left Orthodox religious practice and more than a few totally left Judaism behind.  It isn’t entirely a fear of the “other” that makes the hybrid you suggest unlikely to succeed.  Study after study shows that a day school education is most likely to produce a practicing, committed Jew.  Granted, there are many problems that day schools face, both financially and in their abilities to confront the difficulties of a changing society.  But to go back to a system that largely failed our parent’s generation is a mistake.  We need to look at new directions, but we’ve been down that path before and lost too many on the way.

Sorry, but I take exception with that comment from EB.  I grew up in a “modern-orthodox” home.  I went to a secular school and had a “two afternoon/Sunday morning” Hebrew School education.  I, from that education, and my upbringing, can daven in front my congregation as Ba’al Tfiloh.  Trust me, it can be done.

So, basically, afternoon Hebrew school?  What’s new about that?  That’s been a part of the American Jewish experience for generations.  And, it’s produced generations of kids with a poor Jewish education and identity.  I watched my father-in-law, a man who grew up in an orthodox home with a secular and afternoon Hebrew school education, unable to say kaddish for his mother after she passed away last year.  That’s not the education I want for my children.