Close to 300 hundred girls in the Lakewood area are still waiting for an acceptance letter into high school for this coming year. This is in addition to those who applied for elementary school and waiting to be placed. The next round of acceptance letters will go out after shavuos. There is also a severe shortage of space despite a few new high schools that are opening up for this year.
The Satmar community in Lakewood under the leadership of Rav Zalman Leib Teitelbaum will be opening a high school this coming year to accommodate the growth of the kehila.
Please be accurate. There is only one new girls high school , not a few , opening up. It can possibly accommodate around 50 or 55 girls. Last year there was a big shortage of seats and this year there are close to 150 more girls in 8th grade than last year . Also there are 3 new elementary schools that have 8th grade classes for the first time this year. So how exactly does anybody think there will be enough space for everybody ?
ReplyDeleteEvery parent of an 8th grade or pre primary girl just assumes there is some kind of group of askonim and donors who just open up girls schools as necessary . Unfortunately that is not true. It costs huge amounts of money to open new schools ,especially high schools and we need millions of dollars to keep up with the annual demand to start new schools ,buy buildings etc etc . Yes by Chasidim , the Rebbe takes care of raising the funds and he designates askonim to open up schools and classes as necessary. But we don't have a kehila structure, or a Rebbe so we dont have the donors and funds required.
ReplyDeletebefore you buy a home in Lakewood, verify that your children can have a school to attend. And a suggestion for the builders: If you bring people into town, pay into a fund to provide basic infrastructure like schools.
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Why dont people open up more schools
ReplyDeleteGo ahead and open one. You dont have to be an askan or a gvir you need ahavas yisrael and some ambition. type A personality is a plus
DeleteIf by Ahavas Yisroel you mean accepting most girls regardless of whether they have a good reputation , then unfortunately in Lakewood that will not work . Parents will not send to a school next year if they feel the school accepted girls and families that they don't think fit in . I'm not agreeing with that,just stating the facts. Any school that wanted to be inclusive and accept all types of girls, ended up closing down due to future parents not applying to that school .
DeleteOne school opened up in Lakewood, with a public announcement that they will be most exclusive. An interview in the voice of lakewood with the Menahel explained why we need to segregate girls from each others' influences. That school ended up with a terrible name.
DeleteSo we know the problem, anyone want to step up and offer a solution?
ReplyDeleteTZAAR LEIDA -
ReplyDeleteWhat does R ZL have to do with this?
ReplyDeleteWe would have the same problems by mesivtas if not for the fact that there are hundreds of yungeleit who are willing to teach for almost free or very low pay and there are many yungeleit who want to be marbitz Torah and start mesivtas . But by girls, there is actually a shortage of good experienced high school teachers, and no teachers are willing to work for free or very cheap. They would rather work in an office than to work for free. There is no kovod or sipuk in running a girls high school as you don't get to say a shiur or sit by the mizrach vant. No sidyr kidushin. The only thing you get is to spend a lot of years accumulating debt before you can even think of getting close to break even ,if you should be successful.
ReplyDeleteIn order for a new school to be successful you need a good 9th grade student body. If it fails or has a bad name it wont take off the next year. The only way to get good girls is to have a brand name mechaneches/Mechanech on board to start the school.
ReplyDeleteThis is a sad situation which doesn't look its going to get resolved anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteI heard from people in the know that financially its not so difficult to open a new elementary school. But you need really deep pockets to open a high school. The costs are much higher .
ReplyDeleteYou could have left out the Hebrew words. Its not nice to use such words to describe people in our town.
ReplyDeleteProblem remains
ReplyDeleteThe ones whose girls are stuck Usually are those who the raison d'etre was leaving the materialistic profit-oriented World Behind for better Pursuits are more innocent and less capable of organizing accordingly than those eg askonim, donors, Chasidim whose modus operandi are based on The opposite
Cohen Y,
DeleteRight on, punkt vee du zogst.
We are ignoring the fact that allot of us have racist views and beliefs like the rest of the world and it manifest itself when it comes to school acceptance. We like to feel we are better than others that's how hashem created us and as long as we don't work on our Middos the only way we elevate ourselves is to put down others ,wether it's chasidim verus litvish ,yeshivash versus non yeshivash etc
ReplyDeleteThere is no problem, mostly a problem with parents with lots of geiva that won't go to a school that was found for them.
ReplyDeleteThere is a school in town, a perfect bai's yakkov with middle of the road girls, that has dropped from 2 parralel classes to one, due to it not being "in" enough. There were parents willing to hold out their girls for a half a year, just to get into a school they think will make them look better for their neighbors
You could say the same thing without using the word gaiva. Gaiva is the wrong word . Parents are wrong in not sending to some schools where there is room . But its not necessarily gaiva in all cases. There is a false notion that these schools have girls that will be a bad influence on their daughters and Lakewood people just go with rumors and reputation , so its hard to convince them that its not true , no matter how hard you try to convince them.
DeleteAren't they entitled to have as much geiva as the parents And staff that refused to allow them in
DeleteWhat I heard was that there are really about 350 seats short. But some schools have stepped up to the challenge and temporarily stuffed their classes to 40 until there are enough new schools . So with that stuffing ,the shortfall is really only about 150 to 175 or so, not 300. But the schools who already have per class 40 have no room to add more per class and the smaller schools are either unwilling ( rightfully so ) to go to 40 or dont have enough applicants to go to 40. Sounds to me like the only solution is to get parents to send to the schools that have room evenings they feel its no a perfect fit for their kids. Unless they want to send to Satmar or out of town
ReplyDeleteUsually Elementary Schools grab such opportunities to open a high school because they pretty much already have the students and know them well.
ReplyDeleteIn Lakewood, it seems, this phenomena does not occur. There must be some good or very good reason for that.
Can anyone enlighten us on that?
Elementary school costs are substantially lower than high school costs for a number of reasons. In all out of town communities except by heimish and Chasidim, you will find that high school and mesivta tuitions are close to double elementary school tuitions. For some reason in Lakewood, the high school tuitions for yeshivaleit ,rebeim and those whose incomes are low, which in some schools are the vast majority of the parent body , are only a few hundred dollars more than elementary . So most elementary schools can't undertake that financial hit .I assume if you go to Baltimore or five towns you will pay between 12 and 15,000 I guess that the schools where the parent body is mostly bal habatim who are paying higher tuitions in elementary school ,might be able to charge more if they opened a high school .
DeleteGive your local askan a stiff drink, and then ask him how many children per class are necessary to break even. I did, and even a cynic like me was shocked. And he was talking about high schools, and if anyone knows, it is this guy.
ReplyDeleteThere are lots of falsities floated out there by people with an agenda.
Not sure what askanim have to do with this. A noted askan tried to convince my friend to open a high school . He eas very close but when he ran the real numbers , he realized that either the askan was pulling his leg or totally clueless, or probably a combination of both .
DeleteThe law of supply and demand doesn't lie . There are hundreds of talented people looking to create mosdos and everybody is running to start elementary schools ,but not high schools. Even the elementary schools that have a guaranteed student body don't want to start a high school unless they are forced to because their students can't get into the existing schools. That speaks for itself.
I also spoke to so called askanim who claim to know about costs. It seems that the truth is that it varies. There are some schools who pay their teachers much less ,hire younger cheaper teachers, have less extracurricular etc and there fire have less expenses overall. Then there are some schools who have mostly older experienced teachers and their payroll and overall expenses are much higher than the first type of schools. Its interesting to note that it seems that the first type of schools ,who pay less ,at least in Lakewood are less in demand .
ReplyDeleteLakewood school situation is a big mess we need outside intervention to resolve this.
ReplyDeleteDon't really need intervention . If all the money our town spent on Pesach getaways and summer vacations and lexuses and 2 million dollar homes and 300 bottles of schnapps, and 500 dresses for little kids ,would be used for a fund to start and fund schools, then we could make 5 new high schools and have money to spare.
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