New York becomes latest experiment in subsidies for Jewish day school tuition

A classroom at the Darchei Torah Boys School in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York on May 16, 2018. Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

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(New York Jewish Week) — When Will Eastman, a fundraiser for Jewish camps in New Jersey, recently sought to transfer his daughter, the eldest of four children, from public school to a Jewish day school, his immediate reaction was “sticker shock.”

“The minute we walked in the door, it was $27,000 for kindergarten at one place and $17,000 at another,” he said.

The tension between the desire for Jewish education and the crushing price tag is what UJA-Federation of New York is aiming to relieve with a new three-year $15 million pilot fund to help cover day school tuition. The program, announced this week, will provide grants of up to $20,000 per student for middle-income families and Jewish communal professionals in New York City, Westchester, and Long Island.

Even though his family is outside UJA’s catchment area, Eastman said “we should be happy for others — hopefully this starts a domino effect in other federations.”

The money comes from what UJA calls its “surge” fund, part of a national Jewish Federations campaign to respond to a wave of post–Oct. 7 engagement in Jewish life. Across North America, federations have used the “surge” label to describe a spike in demand for Jewish schools, camps and synagogues, and they are investing extra dollars to meet it.

Applications open in mid-November for awards that begin with the 2026-2027 school year.

In interviews, UJA leaders and field experts cast the program as both a response to a surge of Jewish engagement since Oct. 7 and a test case they hope to scale.

“There’s a receptivity to day school education among a broader segment of the community,” UJA CEO Eric Goldstein said. “In this moment of opportunity… we’re trying to remove barriers that keep families from choosing a Jewish school.”

The pilot offers $15,000 per child per year (capped at $30,000 per family and up to 50% of tuition) for communal professionals with K–12 students enrolled at one of 54 participating schools in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County.

A second “transfer” track provides up to $20,000 per child for grades 6-12 (capped at $40,000 per family and up to 50% of tuition) for first-time day school families moving from public or independent private schools.

According to the 2018–2019 Avi Chai Foundation census of Jewish day schools, about 20% of Jewish school-age children in the U.S. are enrolled in Jewish day schools, and of those students, around 90% attend Orthodox schools.

Across the country, affordability has become the defining challenge for Jewish day schools, sparking experiments in philanthropy and communal funding.

From Cleveland, where the Mandel Foundation recently committed $90 million to a system-wide transformation effort, to Toronto’s Generations Trust and the Jewish communal professional subsidy in Atlanta, federations and foundations are treating tuition relief as a strategy to stem attrition and grow enrollment.

New York’s pilot represents the largest such initiative in the nation’s biggest Jewish community, and leaders say they hope it will become a model others replicate.

Awards are administered by the Hebrew Free Loan Society, paid directly to schools and coordinated with school-based financial aid. UJA says the application will include a research component to gauge impact on school enrollment and the recruitment and retention of Jewish communal workers.

Goldstein said average grants of $15,000-$20,000 could reach “somewhere between 150 and 200 students” during the pilot.

He said UJA is tapping two sources: an endowment-backed post–Oct. 7 allocation to meet “the surge” in Jewish engagement — a term adopted by Jewish groups across the country to describe fuller synagogues, stronger program participation, and renewed interest in learning and identity — and its regular Jewish Life grants. UJA hopes early results will justify raising additional funds.

“Let’s see what the pickup is — our real hope is that we will significantly scale this beyond the pilot,” Goldstein said.

School leaders greeted the announcement as consequential for affordability, morale and messaging.

“It was really encouraging,” said Rabbi Bini Krauss, head of school at SAR Academy, a Modern Orthodox private school in the Bronx. “For communal professionals, even after a school’s financial aid, there can be a big gap. In New York, it’s really hard to make it work without additional support.”

Krauss said he expects strong demand among Jewish professionals and believes the transfer track could nudge new families to enroll. He praised UJA’s attempt to separate its scholarship from school aid so the dollars don’t simply displace existing packages.

“That’s why it’s a pilot — they’ll have to work through details — but the individual grants are significant enough to matter,” he said.

At progressive and pluralistic Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn, head of school Nicole Nash called the fund “a true game-changer,” especially as families seek “places of connection and belonging.”

She underscored the size of the awards and said the income ceiling at $350,000 is meaningful for middle-income New Yorkers who often fall through aid gaps.

“It models a paradigm shift: incentives plus support that help us open our doors wider,” Nash said.

Beyond New York, advocates hope the pilot will spur copycat efforts.

Eastman, chief development officer at NJY Camps and the author of an op-ed in January arguing for tuition-free Jewish day schools, said he views the fund as well-targeted and catalytic.

“Investing in people who already opted into Jewish life with their careers is very smart,” he said.

Eastman said affordability is the “big-ticket item,” but he urged philanthropy to pair aid with excellence: better facilities, stronger programs and top educators.

“We don’t want very affordable, ‘OK’ schools,” he said. “We need excellent schools that are also Jewish.”

That linkage — affordability and quality — is central to how national day school groups read the landscape.

Paul Bernstein, CEO of Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, called UJA’s move “very significant,” noting that New York is the sector’s largest market.

Bernstein pointed to Atlanta’s communal-professional scholarship model as a precedent. Subsidies there did more than lighten family burdens; by freeing up school aid budgets, they were reinvested in quality, which in turn supported enrollment growth.

“Affordability is part of a virtuous cycle,” Bernstein said. “If you invest in aid and in talent and leadership, schools become more excellent; more families enroll; budgets strengthen; and you can reinvest again.”

Bernstein said the Covid-19 period offered an unexpected case study: families who sampled day schools for practical reasons — local public schools were closed — often reassessed the value of the “product” once inside and stayed. Still, he cautioned that affordability in high-cost cities is a tangible barrier that cannot be wished away. Asked whether the field should aim for “tuition-free,” he called it a worthy aspiration but said targeted subsidies layered with other investments are the realistic path forward now.

For UJA, the pilot also doubles as workforce policy. The communal-professional track requires three years of cumulative service across UJA’s 67 core partner organizations and is designed, in part, to bolster morale and retention. (JTA’s parent organization 70 Faces Media is one of the partners.)

The eligible school list mirrors the participants of UJA’s long-running Fund for Jewish Education, which historically subsidizes teacher benefits and training — a choice intended to ensure participating schools already have a stable financial relationship with UJA.

A special-cases committee will review borderline situations: for example, applicants just over the income limit or whose schools are seeking to join the eligible network. Awards will be first-come, first-served with an internal equity review aiming to balance geography and school types, according to Hannah Kober, UJA’s director of day school strategy.

“We want to make sure that we are really offering this program to the broadest segment of the community as we can under these circumstances,” Kober said during an online briefing Thursday.

Goldstein stressed that day schools are “not the only” pathway to Jewish engagement, citing camps, synagogues and Jewish community centers, but said the research is clear about their long-term impact on literacy and identity.

“Our greatest hope is that it’s fully subscribed,” he said of the pilot. “Then we can do what we can to scale.”

Krauss, the SAR head, framed success similarly: not just more seats filled, but a message to young professionals considering careers in Jewish life that the community will stand behind their families. “Call it a scholarship if you want,” he said, “but I think of it as the Jewish world supporting the people who support the Jewish world.”

Nash, at Senesh, put it another way. “You can say something is a priority,” she said. “This is UJA investing like it is.”