No days off for Channukah "in order to fit in all the days we need for the year". In other words they have the minimum amount of school days allowed by law.
The Yeshiva High Schools should be aware that the angry YDS parents will soon be angry YHS parents and we will be demanding more education for our exorbitant tuitions. I know a lot of teachers are on board with more days as long as their kids' schools are off the same days so they have coverage.
Dear Parent:
The following, in broad outline, is the calendar for The Frisch School's 2012-2013 academic year.
We will be starting school on Wednesday, the 5th of September (while many schools will begin the next day). Freshman Orientation will be Tuesday evening, the 4th.
School will be closed:
Sept. 17-18 (Monday-Tuesday) Rosh Hashanah
Sept. 25-26 (Tuesday-Wednesday) Erev Yom Kippur/Yom Kippur
October 1-9 Monday-Tuesday Sukkot Break
Nov. 22-23 (Thursday-Friday) Thanksgiving Break
PLEASE NOTE that in order to fit in all the days we need for the year there will be no Friday or Monday off during Chanukah.
December 25 and January 1 (Tuesdays) Legal Holidays
Jan. 16-27 (Wednesday-Sunday) Winter Break. First day off is Wednesday, the 16th; we return Monday, the 28th.
Feb. 18 (Monday) Presidents Day (PLEASE NOTE that in order to fit in all the days we need for the year there will be classes on Friday, the 15th).
March 22- April 3 (Friday-Wednesday) Pesach Break (Erev Peach is Monday, the 25th; we're off from the preceding Friday. Pesach ends on Tuesday, the 2nd; we resume Thursday, the 4th.
May 14-16 (Tuesday-Thursday) Shavuot Break
May 27 Memorial Day
Last Day of Classes for Grades 9-11: Monday, June 3.
Graduation: Thursday evening, the 6th.
Final Exams (9-11) may well extend through Monday the 17th of June (although we will make every effort to conclude by the previous Friday, the 14th).
Logging you in...
Melvin · 675 weeks ago
Melvin · 675 weeks ago
JS (hello) · 675 weeks ago
I like how much time they give off for Pesach, both before and after. Apparently the $25k+ tuition still leaves more than enough money for the parent body to fly South to a Pesach hotel.
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 675 weeks ago
Also some of the "extra days" shouldnt really count. For instance, its nice that they have a "grandparents day" on Christmas until 12:00 but that's not really a day of school. Kids don't learn anything & they still need an adult with them.It would be like if Yavneh counted their annual family barbecue as a day of school.
wally · 675 weeks ago
Plus, BPY parents are already choosing to pay a premium for their child's education. Now they will be getting more bang for their buck by having 7 more school days than the other schools.
Smart move BPY - as has been said on this blog before. BPY has made some smart moves to position themselves within this community.
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 675 weeks ago
It's a nice thing, as is the barbecue, but it's not a day of school.
who is improving · 675 weeks ago
i have not done this yet, but based upon your comments it seems BPY has "listened" the most - as they added 7 days year on year, and cost did not move a bit. it seems like yavneh heard as well - as they increased their hours (i think this was an older post) and vowed that costs will be the same (or nominally lower).
we should not expect everything to be changed in one year, but we should keep track of the trends to make sure they are heading in the right direction.
childcare counts · 675 weeks ago
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 675 weeks ago
-YD
Joe · 675 weeks ago
wally · 675 weeks ago
But at least after a grueling Frisch education college will be a breeze.
JS (hello) · 675 weeks ago
Go to a real college and see just how dumb and lazy the "goyim" are.
wally · 675 weeks ago
I went to a very good university and breezed right through it with a 4.0 Having 4-5 classes a semester and school for 3 hours a day was WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY easier than Frisch. My dormmates would study non stop, while I was off working and participating a various extra curriculars.
Mark · 675 weeks ago
thatguy · 675 weeks ago
Mark · 675 weeks ago
realist · 675 weeks ago
If some of us are really that unhappy, then move. I happen to love Teaneck and the people that live here. It's an expensive place to live. What with the cost of shuls, schools, kosher food, property taxes, etc, it's simply not for everyone. If you think things are better in public school, send your kids there. No one is stopping you. This blog has just become a gigantic whine fest. Grow up, take responsibility for your choices in life, and move on.
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 675 weeks ago
It's not productive to say "If you don't like it, move." By raising our voices we are trying to improve the situation and we are having some success. I can reply to you in the same passive-aggressive tone you use & say "if you don't like the blog, don't read it!"
MBC · 675 weeks ago
I am sending my kids to yeshiva for religious and social reasons. But I agree with JS that you are kidding yourselves if you think a yeshiva education is head and shoulders above what the average upper middle class kid is getting at their public school.
Mark · 675 weeks ago
And it's not surprising that the yeshiva kids were overconfident since they generally come from a society with a higher level of entitlement than public school kids.
JS (hello) · 675 weeks ago
Thank you for restating my point more clearly.
My point wasn't necessarily that a yeshiva high education is worse than public school - there are some excellent yeshivas and terrible public schools and some terrible yeshivas and excellent public schools. My point also wasn't that every single person struggles in college having come from yeshiva.
My point was that yeshivas, and the Orthodox community in general, spread the false idea that "goyim" are not as intelligent or hard working as Orthodox yeshiva kids. They inflate the kids' egos with utter rubbish in the name of showing how unique and special Jews are. The yeshivas perpetuate the notion that the dual curriculum, late hours, and tons of work will make college a breeze and that you're at a significant advantage over the public school kids who apparently never worked hard in their lives.
I coasted through my yeshiva high school in the top track. I did next to no work and got grades in the mid-90's. I would sweet talk the teachers and rabbis to let me hand in assignments late or simply not at all. It never affected my grade one bit. The top university I attended was a huge wake up call. The BS you can get away with in yeshiva doesn't work in college. The kids there are just as intelligent and motivated as you are. Foreign students are even more motivated and are likely even more intelligent (try being in the top 5% of a billion chinese or indian kids). Kids who went to private schools other than yeshiva received a far more rigorous education.
Point is, there's a lot of really smart and really hard working people out there. Giving yeshiva kids big heads over the fact that they stayed at school late and learned some gemara is doing them a huge disservice and isn't in line with what the real world is like.
I'll also note that if you want to be making the salary that allows you to actually afford an MO lifestyle and these yeshivas, you're going to be working side-by-side with these people and should know first hand how intelligent and driven they are.
thatguy · 675 weeks ago
simply put, a generalization bordering on a flat out lie. How do I know? I was a student in the system and never heard that (though I experienced aspects of it first hand) and am a teacher in the system and have neither said it nor heard it in any of the schools and over the 15+ years of experience I have. I am also a member of an Orthodox community and a parent and I have never heard that sentiment at any lunch table or at any event, private or communal. I have heard the statement that the experience of having a day a couple of hours longer than the average public school day, and with more subjects that need to be juggled, makes the Yeshiva student better trained to handle a volume of topics and content that the average public school student. And I have heard that the average public school student, with more time to get an after-school job, is better equipped to work while taking classes.
I'm not sure what someone told you, or what your colleagues in shul say to their kids, but claiming that it is representative of the message being given in schools and communities is intellectually dishonest.
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 675 weeks ago
Where did you grow up that you heard "goyim were not as intelligent"? Certainly doesn't sound like the MO community in Bergen County.
JS (hello) · 675 weeks ago
While I doubt any rabbi gets up and starts his drasha from the pulpit or any yeshiva rabbi tells his students this outright, there's no doubt this is the ethos and philosophy that is espoused. I hope I don't need to remind you of the many, many, many comments on Chump's blog denigrating public school kids with all sorts of terrible names and ascribing to them all sorts of terrible behaviors. So, please don't tell me that this attitude doesn't exist or isn't prevalent.
Some of the attitude is outright bias and some of it is pure ignorance.
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 675 weeks ago
thatguy · 675 weeks ago
So your statement that there is, "no doubt" an ethos and philosophy is unpersuasive unless we lump it in with parallel statements that there is a philosophy that says any one of 50 other things. People make up a community. Some people have a certain idea. This is not the same as an institutionalized outlook.
JS (hello) · 675 weeks ago
All I know is my own yeshiva experience in the top track, my siblings having the same experience, friends of mine from my high school class saying the same, people I went to university with from other yeshivas expressing the same sentiment, and seeing kids for years that are younger than me coming back from university on breaks saying the exact same thing - "I didn't think university would be so hard/be so much work, I thought after yeshiva it would be a breeze..."
JS (hello) · 675 weeks ago
This isn't 2-3 people. It's a lot of people all telling me the same thing - that the yeshiva system gave them the impression that they had a leg up and were better prepared than their counterparts and that this turned out to be untrue.
Miami Al · 675 weeks ago
In some ways, the Yeshiva schedule is the antithesis of this, where you cover a lot of subjects very shallowly. A good college prep school uses the high school years to prepare kids for college... English papers evolve until being college-level junior year, and elite university level senior year. AP Calculus is a mid-level course with 2 additional years of calculus being available. Intense science courses that have 4+ AP class averages and extensive lab work prepare one for college level science.
The South Florida Jewish Day Schools seem to lack real lab components to science, nor intensity of AP schedules. Sure, they are better than a mediocre district school, but if you compare them to the public and private schools catering to the graduate-school educated Reform/Conservative Jews, they simply aren't hitting that intensity level.
My friends that went to the local schools and then Ivy League colleges were SHOCKED at how under-prepared they were. My wife went to a "decent" public school and was not prepared for college and suffered freshman year and never really recovered. I was highly prepared and found an elite college very straightforward, but I'd been doing Ivy-League level math/science/social sciences work starting in 11th grade.
My college friends that went to Yeshivas in your neck of the woods were hit or miss, some were prepared to buckle down and do the work, others were not, but NONE OF THEM seemed prepared for the intensity in a subject matter that is offered at an elite college.
Maybe at a mid-level top tier school like NYU this is less pronounced, but talk to people that went to Columbia, Penn, MIT, or Cornell, ask them how prepared they were.
If you are smart and work hard, you'll do fine regardless of preparation. But if you are prepared, you're less likely to stumble as a freshman. A stumble as a freshman may lead to a less challenging major, which may lead to a less prestigious graduate school, which may ripple.
If you doubt this, is the generation that is starting out professionally (say, age 25), that is nearly universally Day School educated, as able to support their lifestyle as their parents. If so, then the Yeshiva system is maintaining their place in the socio-economic ladder. If not, they are falling.
I see a LOT of falling.
Intercultural School · 296 weeks ago