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A24
February 19 • 2009
JINI
ii
he Kadima Hebrew Academy
in the West Hills neighbor-
hood of Los Angeles found
itself this fall in the same boat as most
other Jewish day schools.
The elementary school, which has
260 students, saw a dramatic increase
in requests for financial aid and faced
a potentially significant drop in enroll-
ment next year if it could not provide
relief for its suddenly financially
squeezed parents.
Kadima president Shawn Evenhaim
estimated that the school was fac-
ing double the need for financial aid:
About 30 percent of its students now
receive some sort of assistance, but
school officials thought the figure
would reach 60 percent for the 2009-
10 academic year.
"We were listening to parents tell-
ing us what is going on in their lives:
They have lost their jobs, they have
lost houses:' Evenhaim told JTA."We
could have taken the stance that we
don't care and that this is what it takes
to run a school. We would have lost a
lot of students."
Instead, Kadima cut its tuition by
20 percent across the board. Its tuition
now for an eighth-grader is about
$16,905.
.
To help offset the cost of the reduc-
tion, the school asked that those
parents who could still afford to pay
the full tuition accept the break but
consider giving the difference to the
school as a donation. Evenhaim says
the move has paid off, with Kadima
expecting an enrollment increase of 20
percent for next year.
On Course •
With the recession in full force, Jewish
day schools and yeshivot like Kadima
are scrambling to stay afloat. The
tuition crunch has sparked several ini-
tiatives, including a recent emergency
meeting held by the Orthodox Union
to address the concern.
Education officials say the more
than .800 Jewish day schools in the
United States, with 200,000-plus stu-
dents, are in trouble as tuition dollars
decrease, the need for financial aid
rises and the pool of available philan-
•
thropic dollars shrinks.
"We are now in an industrywide cri-
sis," Moshe Bane, the chairman of the
board of governors of the OrthodOx
Union, told the meeting of more than
60 officials from Jewish day schools at
the organization's New York offices.
The O.U. called the emergency ses-
sion in an attempt to figure out how
to deal with the crisis, which has hit
the Orthodox community particularly
hard. In many O.U. congregations,
where many members tend to be
heavily involved in the financial ser-
vices industry, more than 10 percent
of families have reported that the
primary breadwinner has lost his or
her job.
The Conservative and Reform
movements operate day schools, but a
much smaller percentage of children
from the households of those move-
ments attend Jewish day schools than
from Orthodox homes.
Bane, a bankruptcy lawyer, said that
part of the troubles now facing day
schools stem from their own financial