Opening the Books   

Nachlas Bais Yaakov in Lakewood is $1.3 million in debt.

Joan Dachs Bais Yaakov-Yeshiva Tiferes Tzvi in Chicago faces a $4.5 million budgetary shortfall.

Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn is growing at an exponential rate and needs an infusion of $8 million to cover the costs of a capital expansion.   

Mosdos are in distress as expenses soar and longtime donors, facing the financial challenges of a faltering economy, significantly curtail their contributions. School owners have resorted to refinancing their own homes or taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal loans to keep students in classrooms, but are still not making ends meet.

A family of six in Far Rockaway, New York, has a tuition bill of $60,000 a year.

A middle-class family of seven in Lakewood, earning too much to qualify for a break, struggles to pay $41,000 to cover the cost of their children’s education.

Grandparents in Brooklyn fend off requests from their grandchildren’s schools to cover full tuition costs, totaling over $96,000 a year.

More than 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin coined the adage, “Nothing is certain except death and taxes.” These days, frum families can easily add a third item: tuition increases. Tuition, a school’s biggest source of revenue, is also the biggest monthly expense for a frum family. For both schools and parents, tuition is one of the biggest sources of distress.

Today’s frum schools are collapsing under historic deficits, while families are buckling under unprecedented tuition bills.

But why has tuition, always high, somehow skyrocketed in recent years?

How are schools and parents navigating this major source of tension?

And, are both sides doomed to remain in this chokehold, or is there any sort of solution on the horizon?

Part 1: WHY IS MY TUITION SO HIGH?

THE COST OF RUNNING A SCHOOL IS SO HIGH…

OLD EXPENSES COST MORE, AND THERE ARE NEW EXPENSES IN TODAY’S WORLD

Everyone knows utilities and mortgage prices have shot up, and kosher food vendors have raised prices by 20 percent across the board since 2021. Insurance and liability coverage, which a school needs to operate, also increased by 20 percent, according to the New Jersey School Board Association, and the cost of essential school supplies like paper has tripled since 2019. For schools with transportation, the price of each individual route has increased by at least 15 percent due to driver shortages. Bottom line, schools are just as affected by inflation as you are.