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.
