Hard Weeks.

For the Tuition Assistance Committee, these are the hardest weeks.

The school sent out the Tuition Assistance Awards, and in many situations, people are disappointed with the grant they received. They look at the letter and they see a grant number that is lower than the number they requested. They are upset and frustrated.

What to do?

People can file an appeal of their award; however, in most cases, appeals will be only be granted if there is new or additional information that could not have been brought with the original application for assistance. But the Committee will examine all appeals. So if you think that you have a compelling reason for an additional grant, or you have new information to support your application, you should appeal.
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The entire issue of Tuition Assistance raises a whole host of philosophical questions for the school and its leadership. Any good private school education costs a lot of money to operate; to have excellence, you have to come up with money to pay for the teachers, the facilities, the books, the supplies, and everything else that makes a school great.

Yet, at this time of year, we often hear the mantra of "any Jewish child who wants a Jewish day school education should be able to get one, and should not be turned away because of a lack of funds." Yes, that's true, and we all agree upon it. But simply saying this doesn't make it a reality. Some very generous people have given millions to help Jews get day school educations, but even these millions are not enough to make Jewish Day Schools affordable for everyone. There simply is not the overwhelming community commitment to Jewish private schools that would allow for effective cost spreading.

Nonetheless, Kadima gives its families lots of financial aid. As a percentage of our budget, we probably give more than most schools. Indeed, if we cut our aid in half, we'd be in much better financial position (assuming, of course, that our students didn't leave or we were able to replace our financial aid students with full paying students). But we're not going to do that, because we do believe in trying to make Jewish education as affordable as we can. It is important to recognize, however, that we do not have unlimited funds; as a result, the Tuition Assistance Committee struggles to allocate fairly the limited funds we have for Tuition Assistance. The Committee does excellent work in a most difficult job.

Ultimately, however, I think that we all need to ask ourselves some serious questions around this time of year:

• What are our priorities? Do we believe that providing our children with an excellent, rigorous, effective education in a Jewish private school is a priority for us? If it is, should we provide tuition assistance to a person who chooses to live in a multi-million dollar house, drive fancy cards, and run up enormous credit card debt, but as a result simply does not have enough income left over to send their kids to Jewish private school? Is a family who purchased several rental properties and now finds itself suffering in the recession--and the rental properties are empty and underwater-- eligible for financial aid over the family that owns their home, has decent income, but lives modestly precisely because it knows that it has to pay for their childrens' private school?
  

• Should the school, in an effort to "get kids in the door" reward people who "hold out"?
  

• Do we give out as much aid as asked, in the hope that we will make up the difference on an increased volume of students? If we gave what everyone asked, and we didn't attract new students, we would surely close. And we know, from last year's experiment, that reducing the price 25% is not enough to attract enough students to justify the discount.
  

• At what point do we decide to make a Kadima education something that only the elite can afford? When do we say, "you know what, this family simply cannot afford to come to this school. It's sad, but absent a community commitment, we simply can't offer our education to those who are completely unable to afford it?" Or are we already at this point?
  

These are all tough questions. We don't have any of the answers. But the TA Committee and the school leadership continues to wrestle with them.