Pilot program limits tuition to 15% of income

Ed Segalowitz

TORONTO — In an effort to make Jewish education more affordable for “middle income” families with three or more children, Robbins Hebrew Academy is offering a pilot program called iCAP that will limit tuition fees to 15 per cent of a family’s gross income.

The program will apply to new and existing RHA families, not those transferring from other day schools. But UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, which is backing the idea, said it hopes to expand iCAP to other schools in the future.

The initiative, jointly funded by RHA, Avi Chai Foundation and the federation, will provide financial assistance starting next fall to parents with a gross income between $200,000 and $300,000 who have at least three children in the school.

“Even in that income bracket, it’s very difficult if you have three or more children [in the Jewish day school system],” said RHA head of school Claire Sumerlus. “In order to try to keep those families or encourage them to come to Jewish day school and make it affordable for them, we’ve designed a program we think will help them.”

RHA is the first and only school in the Toronto Jewish day school system to test out the program, modelled after a similar one launched at Solomon Schechter Day School of Boston in 2011.

“We’ve been hearing community comments about the need to encourage, support and incentivize and enable families to say, ‘I can afford a Jewish education and that the cost of education won’t deter me,’” said Ed Segalowitz, executive director of federation’s Julia and Henry Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education.

“If you make between $200,000 and $300,000, and you think, ‘By the time my third kid comes along, it’ll be too much…’ If you knew that it was going to be capped at 15 per cent, you’d think, ‘Maybe I can do it.’”

RHA currently has a student body of about 380. Tuition varies from year to year: fees for full-day junior and senior kindergarten are $13,785; grades 1 to 5 cost $15,325, and grades 6 to 8 is $15,475.

Parents with three children at RHA who are paying full tuition pay about $45,000 a year, a cost that might deter middle income families.

But under the iCAP program, payments for a family that brings in $250,000 a year could be reduced to about $32,000 a year once the 15 per cent cap is applied.

Sumerlus said that when considering the cost, parents should also factor in an annual federal tax deduction worth about 50 per cent of tuition, which, combined with the cap, means families “benefit a fair bit.”

However, if parents are considering leaving a Toronto Jewish day school to take advantage of the RHA program, Sumerlus and Segalowitz said they wouldn’t be eligible.

“We’re not poaching from other schools. If families are already enrolled at another Jewish day school, they aren't eligible for the program. This is for new families,” Sumerlus said.

“This project is to entice families who have not yet entered the Jewish day school system, or those who may be interested in switching from public school to Hebrew school,” Segalowitz added.

But Segalowitz anticipates that other Jewish schools will follow suit and offer the iCAP program in the near future.

“Our plan is to expand beyond RHA,” he said.

Arnie Zar-Kessler, head of school at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Boston, where the iCAP program was born, said that the cost of subsidizing three-child families at her school resulted in “a larger-than-usual across-the-board tuition increase.”

Both Segalowitz and Sumerlus insisted that won’t be the case at RHA.

“For the families that are already in the school, for the next three years, Avi Chai, Federation and RHA are sharing the cost of the implied lost revenue that comes from those families that are already in the school,” Segalowitz said.

Sumerlus said that there are between six to 12 families with three or more children currently enrolled at RHA that might be eligible for the program next year, depending on their income.

She said RHA is not yet able to determine how iCAP will affect the families’ tuition fees or the school’s cash flow.

“The idea is that the new families will come and they will generate new revenue. Those new revenues will be sufficient to cover the cost of educating the children [at a reduced tuition fee],” Segalowitz said.

“We feel that we can draw more families in who wouldn’t otherwise come, and the sheer volume makes a difference. One washes out the other,” Sumerlus added.

Segalowitz said the iCAP program will also not affect federation’s existing tuition assistance program, which provides financial relief to families that make less than $200,000 a year.

He said federation plans to establish a separate fund for the iCAP initiative.

“We want to get the research first, understand what the actual costs are, and then, when we figure it out, we’ll be able to speak to donors to support this effort,” Segalowitz said.

“So all the funds available to people through the financial assistance program is still available for families of lower income levels.

“We’ve been listening to the community’s concern and we’ve been trying to think about what we can do. We’re experimenting,” Segalowitz said.

“We believe in doing whatever we can to make our community and program available to people. We’re trying something innovative and hoping it will work,” Sumerlus added.