Jewish Education
What schools spend, charge and raise — and who is actually at risk. Ten pieces, built on tax filings and national benchmarking panels.
Who is actually in financial trouble. It isn't the schools that close.
Most private schools run short before fundraising. That is what fundraising is for. The real question is who runs short after it. Comparison schools do in 37% of years. Orthodox day schools do in 65% — and they hold 0.7 months of reserves, against a comparison median of 6.4.
run a deficit
The premium is real. It is just not in the price.
Everyone assumes families pay for the second curriculum. They do not. Net tuition is flat across 887 schools. The premium lands on philanthropy.
per student
Growing usually stops saving money. Not here.
Most independent schools stop saving money past about 150 students. Jewish day schools keep saving well beyond it. That makes growth a cost strategy here, and almost nowhere else.
schools still save
Schools raise tuition about 4% a year. Inflation does the rest.
Inflation swung across 8.4 points. Tuition growth stayed inside 1.5. It never tracked inflation. Two large misses happened to cancel.
growth, nine years
A few schools hold most of the money. That isn't the problem.
Five schools hold 40% of the endowment. That looks like the problem. The filings say it is not. The real divide is having a cushion at all.
by five schools
The wealthiest schools are not the most generous.
Endowment is heavily concentrated. Tuition assistance is not. The schools with the least wealth give the largest share of revenue to families.
by the top five
The fastest-growing schools pay their leaders the least.
Pay theory says pay follows growth. Here it did the opposite. Orthodox and Chareidi schools grew revenue fastest and pay slowest. Real pay fell.
pay growth, per year
Boards benchmark against tuition. Tuition barely matters.
Revenue predicts head-of-school pay at r = 0.60. Tuition manages 0.15. Across 134 heads, boards are anchoring on the wrong number.
with head-of-school pay
Tools
Move the inputs. Watch the numbers change.
Every choice has a price. Watch the ledger fill as you build.
Twenty-nine choices, each one priced. The ledger adds a line as you answer. At the end you get the cost per child — and whether tuition covers it.
as you make them
School Financial Health Report Card
86 Jewish day schools. Six pillars, one grade. Move the weights to match what you think matters, and the grades re-sort.
a weighted composite
Household Affordability
Season 1 measured institutions. Season 2 measures households. Not what a school charges — what a family actually pays, across all of it.
The premise. Institutions and households keep different books. A school can hold tuition flat and still price a family out. Tuition is one line. Camp, dues, food and housing are the rest. Season 1 saw the first line. Season 2 adds them up — and looks for the families who left before anyone counted them.
The cost of a Jewish year
A family of four, priced line by line, across several communities. School, camp, dues, food, housing. No anecdotes.
What does participation actually cost, all in?
The band that doesn't qualify
Aid formulas are built around need. Some families earn too much to qualify and too little to pay. How wide is that band now?
Where does the squeeze actually bite?
Who leaves, and when
Attrition gets explained after the fact. This traces where families actually exit, and tests whether price predicts it.
Is the exit financial, or is that the story we tell?
Household ledger
Build a school, from the family side of the table. Enter a household. See the annual cost, and what share of income it takes.
What would this cost us?
Federation & Charitable Giving
Where communal money comes from. Who decides where it goes. And how much has moved away from federated campaigns.
The premise. Seasons 1 and 2 end in the same place: philanthropy closes the gap. Season 3 looks at the philanthropy. The campaign, the family foundation, the donor-advised fund. Allocation decisions are in the record. This reads them.
What happened to the campaign
Twenty years of campaign revenue, in real terms and per household. Set against the giving that routes around federations entirely.
Is the money gone, or just moving differently?
Where the allocations land
Education, social services, Israel, overseas. Stated priorities against what the filings actually distribute.
Do the allocations match the rhetoric?
The rise of the intermediary
Donor-advised funds and family foundations now sit between donors and institutions. That layer changes timing, concentration, and who gets to ask.
Who decides now?
The +161%, from the giving side
Day schools raise two and a half times what comparable schools do. Who are those donors? How few of them are there?
How many people is the sector standing on?