Once again, RYNJ has produced a thorough report showing its finances, budget, etc. Moriah did a similar report for 2012. More on that one another day. I hope all the schools follow suit so we can have an intelligent discussion about school budgets will all of the information being transparent.
Some interesting things I noticed in YNJ's report:
1. The school continues to grow despite the new competition so maybe the panic of a 6th JDS in BC was a bit overblown
2. The "baked-in" tuition is only $200, according to page 18. This is down from $300 last year. Of course this doesn't include what they called "bad debt" (see page 21). I believe this is what they called "delayed tuition payments" last year, because I don't see anything about "delayed tuition payments" this year. They had $300,000 for that figure last year and now they have $30,000 for "bad debt" but I think that might be a typo if they are indeed the same thing. Hard to imaging that it could have changed by 90% in 1 year. Also hard to imagine that in a school of over a thousand students there is only the equivalent of two tuition payments that were not made as required.
3. While small donations have gone down this year, large donations have gone up and it has resulted in an overall increase in voluntary donations that is not insignificant. This tells me that the majority of money raised comes from the top echelon and that as the economy improves so does their disposable income.
4. It was nice to see this comment in the summary: "Our goal is to continue to ensure we provide excellence in all aspects of our Yeshiva without increasing tuition obligations for the foreseeable future." If that is indeed their goal, the increased fundraising will continue to offset inflationary cost increases to keep tuition flat, rather than being used to add staff, programs, capital improvements, etc.
Logging you in...
rejewvenator 4p · 615 weeks ago
Re #2, you're totally misunderstanding what's going on. Bad debt has nothing to do with scholarship, it has to do with credit - ie parents paying tuition on installments. The school noted that last year they changed to an accrual-based system, which means that they record financial events when the obligation happens, not when the cash goes out the door. Practically, what this means is that last year they had to take a bad-debt charge against all the credit they've extended, whether to parents or anyone else, all at once. It's not a real number - they didn't actually spend $300k, or actually experience $300k in losses from bad debt. They just had to establish on their balance sheet that their receivables could well be worth $300k less after allowing for bad debt. The actual amount of bad debt should be lower than the allowance. You can see that this year, they're only reserving $30k of bad debt against about 12 million of revenue obligations. Looks like they're using 0.3% as their rule of thumb, which is reasonable.
This seems like a generally healthy school that has set tuition prices at roughly total expenses/# of students. They don't actually collect all that, but there's almost no tuition dollars by one family that are supporting another family - almost all of those dollars are coming out of fundraising. Also, as a healthy school, they have been able to spend down their mortgage some this past year.
If schools generally look like this, do we still have a tuition crisis?
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 615 weeks ago
rejewvenator 4p · 615 weeks ago
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 615 weeks ago
Regarding #2, if I understand correctly, money from people not paying their tuition comes out of the revenue side and is not covered by the "bad debt" expenditure side. Is that correct? Because otherwise I don't see how it could be only $30K. I'm sure its more than 0.3% of receivables not being paid.
Thanks for the explanation.
rejewvenator 4p · 615 weeks ago
In other words, when somebody takes on the obligation to pay the school, the school records revenue. If, at the end of the fiscal year, there is still outstanding money to be paid, adjustments need to be made to the bad debt reserve, which is on the expense side. You don't reduce the revenue side, you simply adjust the expense side up.
The way that a bad debt reserve SHOULD be entered is based on the school's experience with non-payment, which allows it to come up with a reasonable estimate. Amounts in the 1/4 to 1/2 of a percent are relatively common numbers in other settings, but I have no special knowledge of whether they are appropriate in this setting. Note however that scholarships offered after-the-fact or abatements can be treated in different ways from an accounting perspective, and in general are not considered 'bad debt'.
This may seem like hair-splitting, but in practice there is a difference between saying 'you owe me money but I understand that you'll never pay it so I'm writing it off' and 'I agree that your payment of a smaller amount than our original agreement will be considered payment in full.' I believe that in for-profit accounting this makes a big difference, b/c you can write off bad debt as a business expense, but you can't write off a discount or abatement offered after-the-fact - but I'm not 100% on that.
Note, I'm not a CPA, and none of this is gospel. My knowledge is from being a COO and ED in non-profit orgs.
Ynj fan · 615 weeks ago
Guest1 · 615 weeks ago
Phantom · 615 weeks ago
Jackets R Us · 615 weeks ago
I guess it depends on how you define "most successful". I for one would never send my children to a school that believe that "The Yeshiva continually emphasizes that the highest form of human endeavor is the study of Torah."
Really? I can think of higher forms of human endeavor but to each his own. I would have thought the highest form of human endeavor is helping fellow humans and working to make the earth a better place for all of G-d's creations. I say all the above assuming that the Torah was actually given by God and not written by men (which is far from clear, but again, I'll grant that it was given by God for purposes of this conversation).
Realist · 615 weeks ago
YNJ Fan · 615 weeks ago
Jackets R Us · 615 weeks ago
YNJ Fan · 615 weeks ago
TreeLover · 615 weeks ago
Jackets R Us · 615 weeks ago
YNJ Fan · 615 weeks ago
Jackets R Us · 615 weeks ago
No Longer HF · 615 weeks ago
GUEST 4 · 615 weeks ago
Anti YNJ Hashkafa · 615 weeks ago
Dunbar · 615 weeks ago
GUEST 4 · 615 weeks ago
sgt · 615 weeks ago
Rich He'atid Parent · 615 weeks ago
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 615 weeks ago
Just getting by · 615 weeks ago
GUEST 3 · 615 weeks ago
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 615 weeks ago
Fred · 615 weeks ago
a) I'm not sure what the obsession over jackets is about. If it's not your style, choose another school. But the comments and obsession seem a bit unhealthy.
b) If nothing else, the last financial crisis seems to have encourage schools to realize that they can't willy-nilly raise tuition by 6-10% every year and expect the parent body to be able to absorb those increases.
c) The last few years the school seems to be doing a fine job at holding costs. However, it's not really intellectually honest to say the effect of scholarships was only $200 per student. This assumes all of the money raised goes towards financial aid. But let's assume (because money is fungible) that money raised went to reduce EVERYONE'S tuition. Then you'd have to see the net effect of $1.2 million raised and divide by the number of full paying students. Maybe you'll reply that if money wasn't specifically earmarked for financial aid, not as much much would be raised. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not.
GUEST 3 · 615 weeks ago
Yeshiva_Dad 69p · 615 weeks ago
Not really · 615 weeks ago
Jackets R Us · 615 weeks ago
Teacher99 · 615 weeks ago
Sounds like you're a wee bit jealous. I don't see how anyone could call RYNJ "Chareidi" in the most remote form of the word.
Like it or not, there used to be three yeshivas in this area: RYNJ, Yavneh and Moriah. I think they were all excellent schools. Today, Yavneh and Moriah are struggling, and RYNJ is larger than ever. You can try and explain this any way you like, but it is clearly a very popular school. I'm sure every yeshiva in this area would love to duplicate it's enrollment numbers.
Finally, if you don't value Torah learning, so be it. I'm not sure why you post here, but that's your issue.