Tuition Initiatives and Discounts
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Tuition Initiatives and Discounts: How Jewish Day Schools use pricing to increase enrollment and affordability Daniel Held Evan Mazin Ayelet Seed January 2016 UJA FEDERATION OF GREATER TORONTO UJA Federation’s mission is to preserve and strengthen the quality of Jewish life in Greater Toronto, Canada, Israel and around the world through philanthropic, volunteer and professional leadership. Year after year, UJA’s Annual Campaign allows UJA to care for our most vulnerable: build and strengthen Jewish identity and education, invest in Israel and overseas, and promote Jewish/Israel advocacy, while also creating infrastructure throughout the GTA that serves not only the Jewish community but also the community at large. THE JULIA AND HENRY KOSCHITZKY CENTRE FOR JEWISH EDUCATION The Julia and Henry Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education, UJA Federation’s educational pillar, is dedicated to strengthening, enriching and promoting the quality of Jewish education in our schools and the greater Jewish Community. The CJE ensures its continuity by providing leadership and supporting a sustainable system of quality Jewish schools and programs attracting the greatest number of students. The CJE serves more than 70 day schools and supplementary programs, 1,500 educators and 16,000 students across the GTA. Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... Page 3 Community Wide Initiatives ........................................................................................................................... Page 6 Middle Income Initiatives ............................................................................................................................. Page 16 iCap ........................................................................................................................................................... Page 18 Flat Dollar Amount or Percent of AGI ....................................................................................................... Page 23 Number of Students and Income .............................................................................................................. Page 28 Number of Students .................................................................................................................................. Page 33 New Student Discounts ................................................................................................................................. Page 34 Flex Tuition .................................................................................................................................................... Page 42 Jewish Community Professional Discounts .................................................................................................. Page 55 Referral Discounts ......................................................................................................................................... Page 63 Affiliation Discounts ...................................................................................................................................... Page 65 External Funding ........................................................................................................................................... Page 70 Merit Scholarships ........................................................................................................................................ Page 73 Early Enrollment/Payment Discounts ........................................................................................................... Page 82 Sibling Discounts ........................................................................................................................................... Page 91 Other Discounts .......................................................................................................................................... Page 108 Appendix 1-Schools with Multiple Tuition Models ..................................................................................... Page 115 Contributors ................................................................................................................................................ Page 124 Table of Contents Page 2 Introduction Why Tuition? Toronto Jewish Day School Revenue Tuition, and the ways we talk about tuition, impacts all parts of a school’s functioning Tuition 8.9% 1.1% as well as parent and community perception of 6.7% Donations/Fundraising/ the school. In nearly all schools tuition is the Endowment Income largest revenue stream, fueling the school’s Federation operations and catalyzing its mission. In Other Toronto’s Jewish day schools, tuition represents, 83.0% on average, 83% of revenue. Tuition allows schools to survive and thrive, sustaining quality and driving new initiatives. Tuition impacts teaching and learning, staffing, and the value-added programs critical to our schools’ success. The quality of education and the variety of programs offered by schools are dependent on tuition. Tuition also impacts the perceived value of the school. The framing of tuition impacts the ways parents relate to the school, including the admissions and enrollment process. Tuition informs the demographics and diversity of our student body and impacts the ways the community and donors view day school education. Tuition, and the way it is packaged, is a major indicator of affordability. Nearly three years ago, in researching the Greenbook on Jewish Day School Financial Sustainability and Affordability published by the Jewish Funders Network and the AVI CHAI Foundation, we uncovered some of the ways schools use tuition to increase recruitment and affordability for middle income families. As we, in Toronto, seek to make Jewish day school more affordable for these families we sought to learn from models employed by other Jewish day schools. Introduction Page 3 This Publication UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education is dedicated to buttressing the financial sustainability and affordability of Jewish day school education. Through our work in partnership with local day schools and national agencies, we seek to develop the data and ideas to sustain and strengthen Jewish day schools. In Toronto we are undergoing two parallel processes which led to this report. First, we are seeking to revise our current tuition assistance program. The program, which was developed by UJA Federation nearly a half century ago, currently serves 2,300 students in fourteen schools each year. While the system goes a long way to make day school more affordable for those in need, its application and framing needs to be updated. Second, as many schools and communities are doing, we are seeking ways to make day schools more affordable and accessible to middle income families. Our hope is that by learning from the experience of others, we can improve our own practices. This report is best described as a landscape study of tuition initiatives employed by day schools across North America. During the summer of 2015, we reviewed the websites of hundreds of Jewish day schools to discover how they charge tuition and, just as importantly, how they present these charges. To be clear, in this early stage of research, we did not pursue schools any farther. We did not contact them to inquire about the rationale for their tuition structure or presentation nor did we inquire about the impact of the initiative on enrollment or affordability. These, of course, are worthy questions to ask but will be undertaken only in the second phase of this research to be conducted in 2016. During this second phase, we will seek to learn about specific initiatives in greater depth. We base the report below on what we found online. We recognize that some websites may be out of date and others can only be fully understood within the particular context of the school. We also recognize that the conversations that happen with school admissions professionals are critical to a family’s understanding of tuition, but our research did not benefit from these conversations. We apologize for omissions and errors in reporting. Introduction Page 4 It is also important to note that nearly every Jewish day school has some kind of tuition assistance or subsidy program. These programs are not the focus of this study and were not included in the pages below. Notwithstanding these caveats, our community and school leadership in Toronto has found this data helpful, and we hope you do too. Reading this report Categorizing tuition initiatives can be difficult. Many of the initiatives & discounts we studied could fall into multiple categories and, without knowing the underlying goals of the initiatives, categorizing can be even more challenging. Nevertheless, we roughly created twelve groupings. It may be helpful to skim individual sections, or read particular sections of interest more in-depth. For each initiative we sought to give a brief overview of the initiative/discount including school information, eligibility criteria, the application process, and baseline school tuition. Throughout, we tried to include links to the initiative/discount website and/or application in order to offer a jumping-off point for more information. Introduction Page 5 Community Wide Initiatives Throughout North America, local Federations and Foundations support Jewish day schools. While a number of communities