Taking a Break

I'll be away for Yeshiva Week & won't be able to moderate so all comments will go into moderation until I have a chance to approve them.

Enjoy the break!

Tiferet Trying to Open a 2nd & 3rd Grade in September

Interviews & Evaluations Tiferet admissions team meets 50 students & their parents! Rabbi Sacks and his admissions team conducted the first of multiple rounds of group interviews and evaluations this past Sunday for approximately 50 PreK through 1st Grade students. Rabbi Sacks led the interviews together with two child psychologists with extensive experience in assessing children for school placement. Rabbi Sacks engaged the children by playing music on a keyboard and singing songs, warming them up for their individual assessments with professional child psychologists. Rabbi Sacks also met with every parent, outlining the goals for the school, the students, and how to make the most of the relationship between faculty and parents. .....

Admissions Tiferet classes are quickly filling up! Registrations will be prioritized first come, first served PreK, Kindergarten and 1st Grade We are excited to announce that we have already exceeded expected demand for PreK, K, and First grades and are currently assessing whether to open additional classes for these grades to accommodate all applicants. A decision will be made by the application deadline of February 1st, 2013. Please apply immediately to reserve space for your child. 2nd and 3rd Grade 2nd and 3rd grades are also growing quickly. We will make a final decision regarding these grades by February 1st, 2013. Space is limited, so please apply right away to reserve space for your child. The February 1st, 2013 deadline is fast approaching.

Update on Harlem Hebrew

Introducing our new Head of School and new home!

We at Harlem Hebrew Language Academy Charter School have exciting news. We have found a terrific Head of School to lead our school as we prepare to open next August and a great site to serve as our home for our first few years.

WE HAVE HIRED OUR FOUNDING HEAD OF SCHOOL

First and foremost, we are excited to welcome Robin Natman, a highly accomplished and dedicated educator, as our founding Head of School. A graduate of Brooklyn College, where she also received a Masters in elementary education, Robin began her career as a New York City public school teacher. She spent 18 years in the classroom before moving up to an administrative position as coordinator of reading and language arts for Copiague Public School District on Long Island. She went on to serve for three years as the Director of Humanities for the East Meadow School District on Long Island. 

Robin was trained as an administrator at Queens College and is currently working towards a second administrative degree at Bank Street College of Education. Most recently, she has been working as a consultant for a prominent educational publishing company.

From these varied experiences, Robin will bring an incredibly valuable range of knowledge and skills to the development of Harlem Hebrew. She has developed rigorous curriculum; she's created and implemented school improvement plans; she's designed complicated budgets and coordinated multiple funding sources. But even more important to us, she will bring a great passion for learning, particularly in early literacy that will define the right tone and path for our students and the great school we intend to build.

WE HAVE PROCURED OUR FIRST HOME

Our new home is a well-known building on Saint Nicholas Avenue in south Harlem between 117th and 118th streets. The site was once home to the school of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church and more recently has been used for after-school programming by the Harlem Children's Zone.

In a few months we will start work on a major refurbishment of the facility. Once it is completed, we plan on sharing the 33,000 square foot building for the first two years of our lease with another charter school. Through Yellow Buses provided by the New York City Department of Education, this location will be accessible to students residing throughout Community School District 3 as we work to make Harlem Hebrew a diverse school of excellence.

Join us as we build a school of excellence!

Guest Post: JFS – 3 Years In

Four years ago we decided to consider educational options that wouldn’t leave us broke or asking for money from others. This was prompted, in part, by the arrival of our fourth child (who is now 5 ½). We stumbled upon JFS, mostly because we casually knew Uri and Devra Gutfreund, who started sending their children to JFS that year. Uri found JFS during a failed attempt to start a low cost school in Bergen County. JFS has a 50+ year track record, and it was Uri’s benchmark for low cost schools. I have posted from time to time about JFS on this blog and others, but as we head into Yeshiva break week, I thought it would be appropriate to follow up.

Educational Quality

I cannot stress enough how impressed we have been with the quality of education JFS provides. Generally speaking, this is “old-school” education. Teachers command their rooms – there aren’t multiple teachers to hand off to, so teachers who can’t control their students don’t last long at JFS. While there are smartboards, and there is a computer lab for assessing progress in math and reading, this is not HeAtid. It’s certainly not Noam, either--the educational philosophy is less “the centrality of the child,” and more, “pay attention in class and do your homework.” The religious subjects are taught much the same way; when you’re learning Torah, you’re learning Torah. I’ve seen some schools that try to integrate Torah into the secular subjects as well, JFS doesn’t explicitly do that.

We have three very different children at the school. We were told by a local school that one child might have learning disabilities and that intervention might be required. JFS evaluated this child and concluded that all the child needed was firm expectations. This child is now in the middle of three tracked classes and is performing well. Another child is incredibly bright but has difficulty socializing. We have been impressed by the combination of educational discipline and understanding that has allowed this child to succeed. Finally, one child is incredibly bright and socializes easily. You’d expect this child to thrive anywhere, and that’s certainly been the case at JFS. We’d like this child challenged more, but JFS’s tracking system has him in the highest class and unless we homeschooled him, we doubt he’d do better anywhere else. JFS has been slightly harder for him than his previous school – especially in Hebrew, where JFS’s standards are simply higher. (There is a substantial base of Israelis at JFS, and the Hebrew language classes are beefed up accordingly.)

Other Benefits

It’s hard to quantify this precisely, but we have also found that JFS kids are simply nicer and (slightly) less materialistic than BC kids. There are parents who are lawyers and accountants, but also parents who are union plumbers and auto mechanics. JFS has a diverse parent body in other ways, too – Ashkenazim, Sefardim, various shades of Modern Orthodoxy, and even a few families who are not fully religious (yet). We consider this exposure a major plus. It also means that while JFS gets some of its Rabbeim from RW areas just like BC schools do, the Rabbeim have to be more open minded to teach at JFS.

Because the school day is shorter for younger grades and it doesn’t make sense to run two separate buses to BC in the afternoon, the younger kids have free, teacher-supervised after-care. This means that a) they get their homework done before coming home, and b) JFS’s hours are far more working-parent friendly. Our kids leave the house at 7:15 AM and return around 5:10 PM.

How They Do It

JFS keeps costs low in a variety of ways. They have a lot less administrative overhead. They pay lower teacher salaries – many of the teachers are supplementing public school pensions, and JFS is competing with Brooklyn for teachers, where salaries are lower still (and you might not get paid at all). JFS has fewer teachers per classroom, no rent expenses (the building was paid off), and shares expenses and facilities with RJJ, the more right wing school in Staten Island. JFS/RJJ is the only example I can think of in a major metropolitan area where MO and RW cooperate in this way. Achdut/Achdus at work. It’s amazing. Finally, New York State provides more resources (secular textbooks, the school nurse) than New Jersey, which helps keep costs down, too.

How Much it Costs Us

Tuition at JFS for Staten Island residents is a little over $9,000 all-in for K-8. Most JFS students live in Staten Island, but the local community is not growing as quickly as it once was, and JFS decided to reach out to families in Brooklyn and Bergen County to fill classrooms and round out the student body. To do so, JFS initially capped tuition – all-in – at $8,500 per child for Bergen County families including door-to-door transportation. This year it raised tuition to $9,000; door-to-door transportation and all fees are still included. (JFS sets tuition even lower for Brooklyn families – many Brooklyn schools offer little in the way of secular education, but tuition is cheap). There are no building funds, dinner fees, security fees, etc. However, there are still $5/$10/$18 things throughout the year for trips and whatnot. These used to drive me bonkers when I was paying thousands more for tuition/add-ons and STILL had to pony up for a trip to the matzah factory, now I just laugh and write a check.

Drawbacks

We are sending our children over a bridge to another state when there are five perfectly good – and in some ways great – local schools. But the commuting time from our house is not a big deal. Ironically, our 5 year old attends HeAtid in Bergenfield, and he is on the bus for 50 minutes each direction, plus we need to take him to/from the bus stop. Our three kids going to Staten Island are picked up at our doorstep and are on the JFS bus for 40 minutes each way. There is usually one day a year when the Turnpike is closed for a tractor trailer accident and it takes over an hour; even the worst Rt. 4 backups aren’t as bad because you can route around them. But that’s really rare.

The bigger problem is that we have to drive to JFS for parent-teacher conferences and siddur plays; Bergenfield, Englewood, or River Edge is much closer. Birthday parties are not as big a deal as we feared; after a certain age, there just aren’t that many of them. We do drive to Staten Island or Brooklyn every once in a while for play dates or joint projects, but this is not a regular thing. Getting to Staten Island on a Sunday morning is a breeze; getting to Brooklyn… ugh. Our oldest is getting to bar mitzvah season, and we’re starting to realize that transportation for that may be an issue. It can be a problem in reverse, too: for a recent bat mitzvah, one BC-JFS family rented a bus to transport their child’s friends to the celebration here. That move ensured all of child’s friends were able to come, and the family considered the $300 bus rental a part of their tuition. We also provide each of our kids with Nintendo units for the bus as compensation for their “longer” commute; that’s basically a cost of JFS, too.

Socially, all three of our children maintain strong friendships with local kids from shul/camp/prior school. In our shul, parents send to a variety of local schools (plus Breuer’s and JFS), so it’s not like they always associated with the same kids on Shabbat as they did during the week. And, again, ironically, our HeAtid child does not have any school friends within walking distance on Shabbat, either.

The biggest drawback is that JFS does not have a high school. From what I can tell, our local high schools are amazing, but they are quite a jump in cost from what I’m paying for elementary school, and we’re suffering from much greater sticker shock than if we’d been paying $14K – 18.5K all along. Yikes.

Q&A

I’m not traveling this week and I’m happy to answer any questions in the comments. –Avi Greengart

Open Letter from Westchester Day School

[UPDATE: Below is the 2008-2009 tuition schedule from WDS.  Compare to the current tuition schedule linked to on the right side of the screen.  Despite one year's exception tuition has going up, not down]

Open Letter on Day School Tuition

As WDS begins an exciting transition period, we wanted to take this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to addressing the issue of day school affordability. In February 2010, in response to a deepening economic crisis, Westchester Day School received widespread accolades by lowering tuition for the first time in its history. This past Fall, WDS announced another bold initiative and reduced tuition rates in the lower grades by 25% as part of a multi-year plan designed to reset tuition rates across ALL grades over the next seven years. We again received praise from our community Rabbis and virtually the entire parent body, though a small group within Westchester has chosen to respond by opening a competing school.

Over the last four years, WDS has found ways both to cut costs and to increase revenues. This has allowed us to lower our tuition rates without sacrificing our superior educational product and nurturing environment. The latest phase of our initiative, announced this past October, reduced 2013-14 tuition rates in Ganon through 1st grade by approximately 25%, resetting tuition for 1st grade at $13,500 from over $18,500. The goal of our multi-year strategy is to reduce tuition by a significant amount each year for one additional grade so that after seven years the entire school will have a new tuition schedule. This means that over time, a family with three children enrolled in WDS can save over $100,000 (in today's dollars) from the new tuition schedule. In addition to our efforts to address tuition costs, we are very proud to have faithfully adhered to our tenet to not turn away students for financial reasons, as we provide close to 40% of our families with financial aid.

There are two key drivers that make this ‘reset’ sustainable. First, WDS has a debt-free balance sheet, thanks to a history of prudent expenditures, generous community-wide support from a very broad donor-base, and a profitable summer program. Second, our classes are currently operating under capacity, and therefore we can increase our class size without a commensurate increase in expenses. With more students, we can raise revenue and thereby provide lower tuition to our families. WDS is committed to this program, absent any extraneous factors, but only if we meet our enrollment targets – if we meet those targets, the program will fund itself going forward. In short, WDS has rolled out a carefully considered, sustainable model that will provide families with substantial tuition relief while maintaining our high quality of education.

By all measures this initiative should be met with excitement, energy and support. And, for the vast majority of our community, this has been true, and we thank you for your support. However, despite these efforts, a small group has decided to start up a competing school and has been actively recruiting WDS families, something never seen before in the Westchester area.

Over the past 65 years, Westchester Day School has prepared close to 2,000 students for the high schools and ultimately the universities of their choice, instilling them with a love of Judaism and a strong sense of community. WDS provides a proven academic program with a coveted accreditation by the Middle States Association on Elementary Schools, and is situated on a spectacular one-of-a-kind campus. Our talented faculty members, including our specialists (phys ed, music and art teachers, a librarian and a Learning Center team) bring a wealth of experience that cannot be replicated overnight. We take pride in our approach to differentiated learning that provides students with extra support or challenges, we offer stimulating extra-curricular activities, and our children benefit from valued staff members, including our school psychologist, nurse and social worker. Just like any school focused on 21st century education, we have rolled out pilot programs in blended learning, and supplemented our curriculum with computers, SMARTboards, and even our own iPhone app.

Our pledge is to continue to focus on containing costs, but not to the detriment of the educational, emotional or spiritual growth of our students. We are not willing to do away with resource rooms, over-extend class sizes, hire more junior teachers or frequently turn over faculty in an effort to cut costs. While we will continue to experiment through pilot programs, we are not willing to adopt a new model until there is a curriculum (both general studies and Judaic studies) with a proven academic track record, and one that has demonstrated long-term financial sustainability.

Day schools around the country have a duty to serve their communities. If a community day school chooses to ignore the tuition issue, it ought to face pressure from its constituency.   That has never been the case with Westchester Day School, and is certainly not the case in 2013, as evidenced by our latest initiative. The concept of a new competitor directly undermines WDS’ multi-year strategy of lowering tuition through increased enrollment, putting more pressure on donors in the community and jeopardizing the prospects for tuition relief for all WDS families.   As we kick off 2013, it is an exciting time for you to be part of the WDS family. You should take great pride in the school and the tremendous value proposition we offer to the community. We are once again taking a leading role in addressing day school affordability, while at the same time we continue to introduce innovative programming and provide a top notch education to our nearly 400 students. We thank you for your continued support, and look forward to celebrating with you at the upcoming Annual Dinner on Saturday, January 12. Dan Kosowsky David Goldschmidt President Chairman

Open Letter from Westchester Day School

I think I posted an old letter from WDS yesterday by mistake. here's the more recent letter:

Open Letter on Day School Tuition

As WDS begins an exciting transition period, we wanted to take this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to addressing the issue of day school affordability. In February 2010, in response to a deepening economic crisis, Westchester Day School received widespread accolades by lowering tuition for the first time in its history. This past Fall, WDS announced another bold initiative and reduced tuition rates in the lower grades by 25% as part of a multi-year plan designed to reset tuition rates across ALL grades over the next seven years. We again received praise from our community Rabbis and virtually the entire parent body, though a small group within Westchester has chosen to respond by opening a competing school.

Over the last four years, WDS has found ways both to cut costs and to increase revenues. This has allowed us to lower our tuition rates without sacrificing our superior educational product and nurturing environment. The latest phase of our initiative, announced this past October, reduced 2013-14 tuition rates in Ganon through 1st grade by approximately 25%, resetting tuition for 1st grade at $13,500 from over $18,500. The goal of our multi-year strategy is to reduce tuition by a significant amount each year for one additional grade so that after seven years the entire school will have a new tuition schedule. This means that over time, a family with three children enrolled in WDS can save over $100,000 (in today's dollars) from the new tuition schedule. In addition to our efforts to address tuition costs, we are very proud to have faithfully adhered to our tenet to not turn away students for financial reasons, as we provide close to 40% of our families with financial aid.

There are two key drivers that make this ‘reset’ sustainable. First, WDS has a debt-free balance sheet, thanks to a history of prudent expenditures, generous community-wide support from a very broad donor-base, and a profitable summer program. Second, our classes are currently operating under capacity, and therefore we can increase our class size without a commensurate increase in expenses. With more students, we can raise revenue and thereby provide lower tuition to our families. WDS is committed to this program, absent any extraneous factors, but only if we meet our enrollment targets – if we meet those targets, the program will fund itself going forward. In short, WDS has rolled out a carefully considered, sustainable model that will provide families with substantial tuition relief while maintaining our high quality of education.

By all measures this initiative should be met with excitement, energy and support. And, for the vast majority of our community, this has been true, and we thank you for your support. However, despite these efforts, a small group has decided to start up a competing school and has been actively recruiting WDS families, something never seen before in the Westchester area.

Over the past 65 years, Westchester Day School has prepared close to 2,000 students for the high schools and ultimately the universities of their choice, instilling them with a love of Judaism and a strong sense of community. WDS provides a proven academic program with a coveted accreditation by the Middle States Association on Elementary Schools, and is situated on a spectacular one-of-a-kind campus. Our talented faculty members, including our specialists (phys ed, music and art teachers, a librarian and a Learning Center team) bring a wealth of experience that cannot be replicated overnight. We take pride in our approach to differentiated learning that provides students with extra support or challenges, we offer stimulating extra-curricular activities, and our children benefit from valued staff members, including our school psychologist, nurse and social worker. Just like any school focused on 21st century education, we have rolled out pilot programs in blended learning, and supplemented our curriculum with computers, SMARTboards, and even our own iPhone app.

Our pledge is to continue to focus on containing costs, but not to the detriment of the educational, emotional or spiritual growth of our students. We are not willing to do away with resource rooms, over-extend class sizes, hire more junior teachers or frequently turn over faculty in an effort to cut costs. While we will continue to experiment through pilot programs, we are not willing to adopt a new model until there is a curriculum (both general studies and Judaic studies) with a proven academic track record, and one that has demonstrated long-term financial sustainability.

Day schools around the country have a duty to serve their communities. If a community day school chooses to ignore the tuition issue, it ought to face pressure from its constituency.   That has never been the case with Westchester Day School, and is certainly not the case in 2013, as evidenced by our latest initiative. The concept of a new competitor directly undermines WDS’ multi-year strategy of lowering tuition through increased enrollment, putting more pressure on donors in the community and jeopardizing the prospects for tuition relief for all WDS families.   As we kick off 2013, it is an exciting time for you to be part of the WDS family. You should take great pride in the school and the tremendous value proposition we offer to the community. We are once again taking a leading role in addressing day school affordability, while at the same time we continue to introduce innovative programming and provide a top notch education to our nearly 400 students. We thank you for your continued support, and look forward to celebrating with you at the upcoming Annual Dinner on Saturday, January 12. Dan Kosowsky David Goldschmidt President Chairman

Westchester Day School Responds to WTA

Dear Parents and WDS Family and Friends, Since 2009, Westchester Day School has proudly embraced its role as a community leader through a focused effort to stem the rise of yeshiva tuition, while maintaining and exceeding the highest standards of excellence in Jewish and secular education. Today, we are excited to announce the next phase of our multi-year campaign. For the 2013-14 academic year, we are lowering tuition for Ganon 4’s, Kindergarten, and First Grade to $13,500, a reduction, on average, of nearly 25 percent. Though we have not yet finalized the new rates for Grades 2-8, we expect to announce reductions across all grades, ensuring that every family at WDS will benefit from the new tuition structure. This is not the end of our campaign. We remain fully committed to our program of reducing the tuition burden on WDS families. WDS leadership firmly believes that lower tuition rates for the early grades simultaneously provides necessary relief to our current parent body while attracting new families to WDS. We will present further details of the new tuition rates to prospective parents at the WDS Open House on Sunday, October 28th. Because effective planning is essential to fiscal responsibility, we will be offering this tuition reduction to those families who commit to WDS by December 31st.  Our primary commitment remains to delivering the highest standards of excellence in education, something our parents and students have come to expect. In pursuit of this mission, we will continue to introduce new educational initiatives and programming in areas such as science, art and music, and innovative pilot programs further integrating technology into the classroom. It is essential to note that we do not expect to reduce any programming in order to implement the lowered tuition structure. It is WDS’s financial strength that uniquely positions us to launch this community-minded initiative. Between our prudent cost-cutting efforts over the past three years, the growth of our immensely popular summer program, and the success of our expanded fundraising efforts, we are confident that we can implement this strategy on a sustainable basis. We strongly believe that the combination of educational excellence, outstanding faculty, community leadership, and our unique and beautiful campus will empower our next Head of School to propel Westchester Day School into the future. These are exciting times to be part of the WDS family, and we look forward to partnering with you as together we build upon our proud 64-year history.   Shabbat Shalom, Dan Kosowsky David Goldschmidt President Chairman