Dear Admin,

There is a reason there is so much animosity toward our children’s mosdos, and it is time we started talking honestly about it.

Frum education is not a “normal” expense that the average family can simply absorb. It is NOT like paying the gas bill or calling a plumber. And stating so shows how out of touch you are unfortunately. Those are expenses that, while sometimes painful, most families understand as part of the ordinary cost of maintaining a household. Tuition is something else entirely.

Yes, it should be a priority. Of course it should. Our children’s education matters deeply to us. But prioritizing an expense does not magically make it affordable.

Families cannot physically print more dollars.

When my HVAC system broke a few years ago, we went two years using window units because that was what we could afford. We knew we needed a new system. We knew it was important. But knowing something is necessary does not mean you can immediately pay for it.

So when a school tells a struggling family, “This is the true cost of educating your child,” it can feel incredibly out of touch.

Perhaps that really is the cost of running the school. But where is the transparency? What exactly are families being asked to fund? What are the expenses? What are the salaries? What is the administrative overhead? What are the financial priorities?

And when families see school leadership enjoying a very comfortable lifestyle—Pesach in Orlando , high end cars, and other visible signs of affluence—the disconnect becomes even harder to swallow. It may be unfair to judge an individual based on appearances, but the perception matters. When parents are being told they simply need to “find the money” while they themselves are struggling to pay their bills, those optics inevitably create resentment.

There is another fundamental problem that we rarely acknowledge: our schools are not operating in a normal marketplace.

Parents cannot simply shop around.

In many communities, a family has one realistic school option that will accept their child. Maybe there are technically several schools, but because of geography, admissions policies, hashkafic considerations, sibling placement, or social realities, the practical choices can be extremely limited.

And once a school accepts your child, parents are often presented with a tuition number and some form of financial agreement. What meaningful bargaining power does the family actually have?

A normal consumer can say, “That price is too high. I’ll go somewhere else.”

Parents cannot necessarily do that with their children’s education.

They are not choosing whether to buy a particular brand of furniture or which plumber to hire. They are trying to secure a place for their child in the educational system their family depends upon.

That is why the constant guilt can be so damaging.

Of course parents should contribute what they reasonably can. Of course schools have enormous expenses. Of course teachers and staff deserve to be paid properly. And of course providing a quality education costs real money.

But there has to be room for an honest conversation about what happens when the “true cost” is simply beyond what a family can pay.

Telling people to prioritize tuition does not solve a mathematical problem.

If a family’s income is $150,000 and their basic living expenses already consume most of that income, telling them that tuition is the priority does not create another $40,000. It just forces them to decide which other bills will go unpaid.

That is not a moral failure.

It is a financial reality.

And there is another aspect of this conversation that deserves attention: the way our community publicly raises and allocates charitable dollars.

We regularly see enormous sums raised for important causes—and many of those causes are unquestionably worthy. But for parents who are drowning in tuition, it can be disheartening to watch millions of dollars flow toward other priorities while our schools continue to struggle financially and families continue to be crushed by tuition bills.

This is not an argument against those other causes. It is an argument for asking whether we have built our priorities and our institutions in a sustainable way.

Perhaps part of the problem is structural.

We have created a private educational system in which families are essentially required to participate, schools have enormous operating costs, parents have limited ability to choose or negotiate, and the system relies heavily on tuition and fundraising to survive.

That is a difficult model to sustain indefinitely.

And if we want to reduce the animosity toward our mosdos, we need to stop treating parents’ financial struggles as a character flaw.

Parents are not saying they don’t value education.

They are saying they cannot afford what they are being asked to pay.

Those are two very different statements.

The answer cannot simply be more guilt, more pressure, and another reminder that “this is the true cost.”

Maybe the real conversation we need to have is: Is the way we have structured frum education sustainable for the families we expect to support it?

If the answer is no, then we need to be willing to talk about transparency, accountability, alternative funding models, community priorities, administrative costs, financial assistance, and perhaps even fundamental changes to the way our schools are structured.

Because families are being crushed.

And telling them that education is important does not change that fact.

S.E.

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