Each year, when Frank Halper is faced with the state tax bill for his accounting business in Providence, R.I., he has a choice.
He can write a check for the amount owed by his company
or, as part of a state tax credit program, he can send a check to a
foundation that provides tuition scholarships to students at
Providence’s two Jewish day schools. His tax bill will be credited for
90 percent of the contribution.
For the last five years or so, his firm has opted for the latter.
“We’re in favor of supporting these schools,” Halper said. “We feel Jewish education is the future of the Jewish people.”
Tax credit programs are among the growing number of
ways that private Jewish day schools and yeshivas nationwide are
corralling hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars annually.
The money is helping to defray operating costs, provide teacher
training, assist students with tuition bills and enhance educational
offerings.
A decade ago, few Jewish schools were aggressive about
pursuing federal and state funding. But as day school tuition rates have
climbed, outpacing inflation and the ability of recession-weary parents
to pay, schools have become much more effective not only at accessing
government money but in lobbying state government for more.
“The financial crisis of 2008 had a huge effect on
tuition and affordability — I think that was really the game changer,”
said Darcy Hirsh, director of day school advocacy at UJA-Federation of
New York, which in October 2011 became the first federation in the
country to create a position for day school advocacy. “Families that
were able to afford day school are no longer able, and schools’
financial aid has grown tremendously over the last five years.”
The haredi Orthodox Agudath Israel of America long has
taken the lead in lobbying for government aid for Jewish schools. Two
years ago it was joined by the Orthodox Union, which began hiring
political directors in a half-dozen states to organize Jewish schools
and lobby legislators.
In New York, the state with the largest day school
population, Agudath Israel and the O.U. have been joined in their
lobbying efforts by an unusual coalition that includes UJA, the
Sephardic Community Federation, the Jewish Education Project and
Catholic groups.
While media attention has focused on the alleged abuse
of government funding programs by Jewish schools, suspect allocations
represent just a trickle of the government funding flowing to Jewish
schools.
The methods used by private schools to get government
money differ from state to state and range from the complex to the
Byzantine.
In Rhode Island, the tuition scholarship tax credit,
which is available to families with incomes of less than 250 percent of
the federal poverty level, is capped at $1 million statewide and open
only to corporate donors. The credit is calculated at 75 percent for a
single year and 90 percent if they donate for two, up to a maximum of
$100,000 annually. The statewide cap is usually reached annually on July
1, the first day applications may be submitted.
In Florida, a similar program last year was capped at $229 million.
In New York, a lobbying effort two years ago resulted
in legislation extending an exemption from a transportation payroll tax
of 0.34 percent to private and religious schools — a seemingly small
change, but one that saved an estimated $8 million per year.
“Figuring out how to do better at this is going to be
one of the big keys to the whole tuition crisis,” said Rabbi Binyamin
Krauss, principal of SAR Academy, a large Jewish day school in
Riverdale, N.Y., where tuition and fees can run as high as $30,800 a
year. “We’re looking to provide a quality education, Jewish and secular,
and I think the solution will have to be to increase revenues.
Government funding is going to need to be a major piece.”
Like many Jewish schools, SAR has dedicated staffers
whose job is to garner the government funds. They range from
reimbursement for administering state exams and taking students’
attendance — state-mandated tasks for which New York Jewish schools
received $42 million last year — to funds for security programs,
textbooks, busing, health services, computer software, teacher training
and small-group tutoring in various subjects.
Jewish schools in New York also have been able to
secure some $300 million per year in therapy and counseling services for
students with special needs, according to Martin Schloss, director of
government relations at the Jewish Education Project. The money goes
directly to pay for the services, not to the school’s bottom line:
Outside professionals come to the school and work with students who have
been deemed eligible by the Board of Education.
“Our schools are aggressive in terms of utilizing
opportunities,” said Schloss, whose organization helps 300 day schools
in New York secure government money. “We’re not asking for a penny more
than we ought to be getting, but not a penny less either.”
Underlying the new advocacy effort is a shift in
attitude among some mainstream Jewish organizations. Jewish federations,
which once opposed government funding for parochial schools, are now
trying to secure government support for them. Both the Jewish Council
for Public Affairs and the American Jewish Committee are reconsidering
their long-held opposition to such funding.
“Overall, the Jewish community has moved much closer to
our side on this issue over the last few years,” said Rabbi A.D.
Motzen, national director of state relations for Agudath Israel, which
has been lobbying for government money for parochial schools since the
1960s.
In addition to financial pressures, a few other factors have fueled the day school advocacy effort.
The growing momentum of the so-called school choice
movement, which aims to give parents more control over where and how
their kids are educated on the government’s dime, has helped create more
favorable conditions for private school funding. A landmark Supreme
Court decision in 2002 upholding parental rights to use government
tuition vouchers at private religious schools helped pave the way for
voucher and tuition tax credit programs in 23 states.
But these programs are not available in many of the
states with the biggest Jewish day school populations, including New
York, New Jersey, California, Illinois and Massachusetts.
Two notable exceptions are Florida and Pennsylvania.
After the Rhode Island program began in 2006,
Providence’s two Jewish day schools were able to get nearly $400,000 of
the $1 million pot. As awareness has grown, their share has fallen to
about $270,000 — still a respectable sum in a state where Jews account
for less than 2 percent of the population.
“By and large we’ve done fairly well in getting what we
can,” said Rabbi Peretz Scheinerman, dean of the Providence Hebrew Day
School. “With all these things, you have to know what’s coming to you
and be on top of that.”
