Friday, May 15, 2009

The Problem with Jewish Charter Schools

The RCA’s 2009 Resolution on Day School Education includes the following paragraph:

Considerable research has demonstrated that the years spent in a Jewish day school environment play a powerful and essential role in Jewish identity formation and ongoing commitment to observance and Jewish community. Even proposed "Hebrew language" charter schools fail to provide an environment conducive to the development of deep-seated Jewish identity. Further, these schools are mandated to teach limited aspects of Jewish culture, self-consciously avoiding Torah and mitzvot.

I have heard from a few people who are upset that this resolution rejects the idea of Hebrew Culture charter schools. They argue that charter schools would be a great option for smaller Jewish communities, which cannot support day schools and high schools.

Unfortunately, my sense is that those people don’t actually understand how a charter school functions. As someone who worked hard on trying to create a Hebrew Language charter high school locally, I can tell you that it is not possible for a Jewish community create one - unless that community has enough kids to support a full Jewish day school.

There are two reasons for this – one political, one economic.

First, the political:
A charter school operates as part of the public school system, and must be approved by the local public school board. Although the charter school is technically under the state’s jurisdiction for certain matters, and although the charter school can appeal school board decisions at the state level, the school must be studied, voted upon, and consistently reviewed by the school board.

Understandably, school boards do not take kindly to charter schools – because the charter school takes their money to support the education of a small group of children. (Yes, we already give them our money in taxes, but that's not the way they see it.) School boards require the charter school to define precisely why those children cannot get a proper education in the normal public school system. And when you tell them your difference is in terms of Hebrew language, and even culture, they are unimpressed, to say the least. In our case, the district gladly offered to institute Hebrew language electives in the public school.

Second, the economic:
This one is an even tougher nut to crack; it’s really what renders the charter idea an impossibility.
Charter schools cannot charge tuition, by law; they can only receive funding from the district. The district provides them with the same funding per child that it provides each public school – in other words, $6,000 to $9,000 in most districts. This means that the Jewish charter school will receive only that amount.
Now imagine you are trying to run your Hebrew charter school in some small community, with ten kids, or fifty kids, or even 100 kids. And let’s say it’s a high-end district, so you make the maximum per student. Still, do you think you can run a complete school for ten kids on $90,000? Or for 100 kids on $900,000? The economies of scale that allow public schools to spend this small amount per child don’t operate until you are up in the 200 kid range – when you really should be able to support a private school.
And, of course: You could charge more than that in tuition if you were a private school, and still be giving parents an incredible break on current tuition costs.

So that’s the deal: Aside from politics, the charter school idea cannot work economically unless the Jewish community has so many kids that it can support a private school – and it could have far more money than a charter school would have, by going private and charging a relatively minimal tuition.

16 comments:

  1. All god points. Locally, most of the charter schools are housed in separate wings or sections of existing public schools, so they defray some of the maintenance and overhead costs by sharing space and administrative staff.

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  2. שבוע טוב

    i'll respond here to both posts:

    "The point of the resolution was not to offer solutions; a rabbinic organization does not have the education expertise to have the answers."

    sometimes it's better not to say anything.

    "The point was only to support the day school model."

    fine. support the day schools without putting charter schools off limits.

    "they are a practical impossibility"

    no they aren't. the ben gamla school faced down the opposition and is here to stay. a new charter school is opening in bklyn in september with no opposition to speak of (the initial vote was 8 in favor, 1 against, 1 abstention). the rca would do better to learn from how these 2 hebrew charter schools overcame the hurdles than to dismiss it as impossible

    "The only community which can support them is a community with hundreds of eligible kids"

    the metro new york community alone could support dozens of schools based on this criterion. as well a few in LA, chicago, baltimore, boston, miami, cleveland, etc.

    of course you are correct that the model can't work in many smaller OOT communities, but this is not a reason to reject the model for the *majority* of day school families (who live in larger communities where it could work).

    "I spent some $40,000 in tuition this year for my kids"

    bubkas (not that i don't feel your pain)

    "they can only receive funding from the district"

    not true. steinhardt (at least as originally reported) was raising private funds to augment the public funding of the bklyn school.

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  3. also, did the rca consider these two mattesr in the deliberations that lead to the resolutionan:

    1) is it more important to have more kids and send them to public or charter schools, or to have fewer kids that go to day school? this is the choice that many families have to make. (i'm sure you've heard the joke about orthodox birth control)

    2) why have we written off non-orthodox kids? i agree that many people misunderstand the scope of a charter school and and i don't think they are (at least as currently modeled) a substitute for day schools. however, yes, it is still better than nothing at all. steinhardt's bklyn school will eventually expand to serve 450-675 kids (so many want to attend that the selection is chosen by lottery), the vast majority of whom will come from unafilliated homes. that's 450-675 kids that the rca (actually MO establishment groups in general, as i shouldn't single out the rca) weren't going to do anything for anyway.

    like i said, i don't think charter school right now are a substitute for day schools, but the more i think about the idea the more i like it.

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  4. Tzipporah-
    Yes, we looked into that option locally, but it didn't seem to work here.

    Lion-
    "sometimes it's better not to say anything."Why is it that people only say that when they disagree with you?

    "the ben gamla school faced down the opposition and is here to stay"
    The Ben Gamla school has the economies of scale of hundreds of students. Ditto for Brooklyn.
    As I said in the post - if you have that many students you can manage the economics, but then you could also do the traditional day school model. You can charge the same rate per student that the district spends, and people can afford that amount (as compared to traditional tuition, which is twice and thrice the amount).

    "teinhardt (at least as originally reported) was raising private funds to augment the public funding of the bklyn school."
    And he couldn't do that for a traditional day school?

    "why have we written off non-orthodox kids?"
    We have not. I actually think the future could lie with multi-denominatonal schools and separate tracking for Judaics, if only the C and R would be willing to support it. (We tried it locally.)

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  5. "And he couldn't do that for a traditional day school?"

    it's not his agenda, so why should he?

    "We have not."

    of course we have.

    "The Ben Gamla school has the economies of scale of hundreds of students . . ."

    why do you keep on rejecting what could work for the majority of day school students because it won't work for the minority?

    there probably isn't one panacea for all american jews, so why does the RCA reject the solution that might apply the largest numbers?

    "Why is it that people only say that when they disagree with you?"

    ?
    i suggested that the rca should have remained quiet in this regard because it had nothing constructive to add to the conversation.
    the day school model is not working for many orthodox families (and it has never worked for the vast majority of non-orthodox families), so what exactly was the point of the resolution?

    " . . . but then you could also do the traditional day school model . . ."

    please clarify

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  6. Lion-
    What can I tell you? I disagree.

    There are people and communities for whom the day school model would work, but they are rejecting it too quickly. Case in point is a community which can send five hundred kids to a school - if they would charge the families a minimal tuition, six or seven thousand per children, they would make more money than a charter school. And if Steinhardt would support it, they would have that much more.

    And no, they would not need to give up on non-Orthodox Jews. They could make the school appropriate for others as well. It can happen.

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  7. In regards to non-O children, I think you COULD get buy-in for a charter school or non-OJ day school from Conservative communities, but you'd NEVER get liberal communities to commit to a dayschool. We have enough trouble as it is convincing parents that they should pay tuition for Hebrew School, which is only a few hours a week.

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  8. I was moved to delurk by tzipporah's last comment. My husband and i live in the San Francisco Bay area, and here there are numerous quite successful community Jewish k-8 day schools and at least one fabulous high school (where we sent our daughter and were delighted to pay hefty tuition so that she could receive a very thorough education, both general and Judaic). Her fellow students ran the gamut from extremely observant Orthodox to entirely unaffiliated.

    My experience is that what parents from "liberal communities" are not willing to buy into is a school which would teach that they and their families are not legitimately Jewish.

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  9. "Case in point is a community which can send five hundred kids to a school - if they would charge the families a minimal tuition, six or seven thousand per children, they would make more money than a charter school."

    i'm just not getting it.
    what's the comparison? how many jewish schools have a tuition that even approaches 6-7k? how could a jewish school run if tuition were only 6-7k?
    and the point is that the 6-7k the charter school gets is not coming from the parents' pockets (at least not directly)
    it's seem to me as if you are saying that jewish parents *must* spend a certain amount of money, so they might as well spend it on the day school.

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  10. Tzipporah -
    My practical experience is that liberal groups won't go for a charter school, because they view it as separatist (from the public school system) and as harming the public schools.

    Anonymous 10:52-
    Agreed.

    Lion-
    What I'm saying is that if a school can run on 6-7K per student from the district, it can run on 6-7K per student from the parents.

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  11. "a school can run on 6-7K"

    i'd like to see a budget that allows for a school to run on 6-7k per student.

    unless you live in oklahoma, nevada, utah, mississippi or a few other states, more than 7k is spent per kid in public school. sometimes way more, i.e., where the largest jewish communities are located. more than 14k in NY and almost 14k in NJ. and private prep schools cost double that. (and these numbers are a couple of years old already.)

    so how should a jewish school--with its double curriculum, no less!--run on 6k per student?

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  12. Lion-
    I didn't say it could run on that - you were the one who said it could. I wrote explicitly in my article that it cannot.
    As I wrote in the comment you are citing: What I'm saying is that if a school can run on 6-7K per student from the district, it can run on 6-7K per student from the parents.

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  13. RH:

    so then i'm not sure what you mean here: "Case in point is a community which can send five hundred kids to a school - if they would charge the families a minimal tuition, six or seven thousand per children, they would make more money than a charter school."

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  14. Lion-
    I mean exactly what I wrote.
    A charter high school in a community with 600 kids can manage with the district's level of per-child spending, because the economies of scale kick in. And if they need more, they clearly have a parent body that can donate additional support.
    But if they can do this as a charter school, they can do the same as a private school. Instead of taking 6K-9K per kid out of the public school system, take it as tuition from the parents.

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  15. "Instead of taking 6K-9K per kid out of the public school system, take it as tuition from the parents."

    i think we're going in circles here, so please set me strait.
    i don't understand. proponents of charter schools see them as a way to relieve yeshivah parents of high tuition. but you're saying there's no difference if the $ comes from parents or from the govt?

    i'm not challenging you. i just don't understand.

    (and again, i don't understand where this 6-9k figure comes from)

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  16. Lion-
    The amount a charter school gets from the district is a per-student payment, and it's the same as what the district pays per child in the regular public schools. It can demand nothing from parents - not tuition, not a building fund, nothing.
    School districts tend to pay 6K-9K per child, so that's what the charter school gets.
    And if that's what the charter school is getting, then yes, it might as well get it directly from the parents as tuition, and avoid all of the political problems of a charter school.

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