Affordability Counts

This blog entry was originally posted on the PEJE blog on March 28, 2011.
In September 2011, a Hebrew language charter school, Shalom Academy, will open in Englewood, New Jersey.  This will not be the first Hebrew charter school in the nation (that distinction goes to Ben Gamla in Hollywood, Florida) or even the first in New Jersey (Hatikvah International Academy in East Brunswick, which opened this year).  However, it will be the first that has been marketed informally within the Orthodox community as a free alternative to day schools.  After years of talk about “the tuition crisis,” Shalom Academy will test families’ commitment to day school in the heart of New York Modern Orthodoxy.
Let me start with the existing Hebrew charter schools, and the challenge they pose to day schools.  Hatikvah, as well as the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School that opened last year in Brooklyn, enroll a substantial percentage of non-Jewish students.  (While religious affiliation and background is not formally tracked in public schools, in these two cases the racial composition provides a decent indication of religious affiliation.)  By contrast, it appears that the Ben Gamla school enrolls primarily Jewish children, most of whom have been or likely would have been in public schools.  All three of these schools have drawn students from nearby non-Orthodox day schools that were already suffering enrollment declines.   Students at all three schools have the option of a Jewish after-school program, with a religious component.
These charter schools raise a thorny Jewish public policy question: from a Jewish perspective, are these schools a net benefit to the community?  Day schools students choosing a charter school are “trading down” for a supplementary school Jewish education enriched by fluency in modern Hebrew.  The day schools they transfer from lose tuition dollars, in some cases putting the schools at the very edge of financial viability.  On the other side of the scale, the many public or secular private school students who choose a Hebrew language charter schools will ideally receive – between the charter school and the after-school program – an enriched supplementary school education.   A debate about the cost/benefit analysis has become standard fare at day school conferences.  Marc Baker, head of school at the Gann Academy, has argued that day schools should embrace the challenge of charter schools to improve and differentiate their product.
In Florida, Brooklyn and East Brunswick, day school attrition was an effect of the charter school rather than its goal.  By contrast, by their actions and omissions – and notwithstanding the language in their charter application about the expected racial and economic diversity of the student body –the founders of Shalom Academy seem determined to prove that a Hebrew charter school plus an after-school program offer a competitive Jewish educational alternative to day schools.  Enrollment for most grades in next year’s inaugural class was oversubscribed, forcing a lottery. While there is no official list of families who have enrolled for next September, estimates by the local Modern Orthodox day schools indicate that a majority, perhaps far more, of the new school’s 160 seats will be transferees from day schools.
I have previously tried to show that Hebrew charter schools with an after-school program cannot offer anything that approaches the benefits of a day school.  That article was written just after the charter was approved, before Shalom’s supporters made their case and before a lottery was needed to choose among the many applicants.  Most observers in the community assumed that Shalom would attract few religiously committed families, and even today the level of concern about day school affordability seems no higher than when the economy collapsed in 2008.
I fear that the Modern Orthodox community in particular is approaching an inflection point, which Intel CEO Andy Grove defined as when “the old strategic picture dissolves and gives way to the new.”  Three generations ago, Orthodox day school enrollment was the exception rather than the rule.  In 2010, virtually the only Orthodox children who did not attend day school had special needs that could not be met in a day school.
The shift to universal day school enrollment is partially attributable to greater religious commitment among Orthodox families as well as increased affluence.  But there is another factor that has been under-appreciated by many rabbis and communal leaders: Modern Orthodox families send their children to day schools because of an implied social contract requiring them to do so.  If nothing is done to make day schools more affordable, that social contract will rend, potentially releasing a flood of day school defections.  This would usher in a new era for American Orthodoxy.
The silver lining in the opening of the Shalom Academy is the advance warning it offers.  Modern Orthodox leaders have ceased to make an effective case for day school education because they did not have to.  They pay lip service to the affordability crisis, but have not mustered the sustained energy needed to effectively address the problem.  The future of Modern Orthodoxy in particular, and an educated Jewish laity across the religious spectrum in general, hangs on our heeding the warning call of Shalom Academy.
Yossi Prager
Executive Director – AVI CHAI North America