Agudah’s R’ Avi Schnall: This Coming School Year Will Be A “Major Challenge” For Yeshivos

Agudah NJ Director Rabbi Avi Schnall posted the following on Monday:

Complicated take: This last budget season was a mixed bag. Some wins. Some losses. The complicated part is being honest about the wins.

Getting a few million dollars in a budget for a program sounds good. And we can put out PR piece that sounds like “wow an extra 2 million for Nonpublic school services, and an extra million for Nonpublic school technology! Wow. We did such a great job!” And most people would read it and think all is good.

But then there’s the reality…

The additional 2 million dollars will nowhere near cover the additional amount of services our schools need to provide. The million extra in technology is canceled out by the loss of $1.5 million in textbook funding. I’ve always felt being honest in the long run is the best policy.

So here’s the truth.

We face a major challenge in this upcoming school year even though there was a modest boost in funding. The growth of our school community is BH huge. And the modest boost doesn’t cover the growth.

There were some good gains. Specifically $7 million in transportation funding. But there were also some losses. So we won’t send out these self gloating emails that ignore the challenge

We will be real. And know that we have an uphill battle before us and we continue to march forward and do whatever we can even after budget season is over to rectify the wrong.