When Gov. Scott Walker signed the state’s budget into law on June 26, he also approved something that will have direct effects on Jewish education in the Milwaukee area.
The budget also contained provisions expanding Wisconsin’s “school choice” program in ways that potentially could benefit all five of the Milwaukee area’s Jewish day schools.
However, at this writing only two of the schools that to date have not been able to participate — Hillel Academy elementary/middle school and the Torah Academy of Milwaukee high school for girls — are considering applying to do so for the coming academic year.
Two others — the Milwaukee Jewish Day School elementary/middle school and the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study high school/yeshiva for boys — have decided that at least for this year, they will not seek to participate.
The fifth, Yeshiva Elementary School, is the only one of the group that has participated in the program ever since it was expanded to include parochial schools in the late 1990s. But the new expansion will affect YES as well.
Rabbi Aaron Gross, the director of development at YES, told The Chronicle on July 21 that to date about 70 percent of the school’s some 200 K4-8th grade students have received funds from the program to help them attend YES; and with the expansion, that proportion is likely to grow to 79 percent.
To date, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program set an income limit for participation of less than $39,113 for a family of four. The expansion of the program raises the income limits to $67,050 for a family of four.
That means “There are students and families that heretofore didn’t qualify for the program, but now will,” said Gross.
Three of the other local Jewish day schools are located in the Milwaukee suburbs — MJDS and Hillel in Whitefish Bay, TAM in Glendale. Until now, participating schools had to be located in the city of Milwaukee.
The participating students must still be residents of the city of Milwaukee, as before; but the expansion allows those students to attend private or parochial schools anywhere in the state. The expansion also removes the cap on the number of participating Milwaukee students.
(The program was also expanded to Racine, but participation there is limited to students and schools within the Racine Unified School District.)
Hillel and TAM appear to have quickly expressed interest in participating for the coming academic year. Both were listed among the possible new participating schools in an article in the July 19 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Bruce Glaser, president of Hillel (which has about 100 students), said on July 19, “We think [the expanded program] offers an opportunity for several Hillel families to be able to afford Jewish education and make it available to their kids.”
Sora Rauch, principal of TAM, said on the same day that potentially about 60 percent of the some 50 students at the school could qualify for participation.
However, that does not necessarily mean that both schools will be able to participate in 2011-12. Both are studying the matter, and there may be some rules and application regulations that will have to be met.
“It is so new; the law was just passed,” said Glaser. “Nobody knows exactly everything involved… There’s ambiguities and details to be worked out… We’re not sure that even if we did everything, we would qualify by fall.”
B. Devorah Shmotkin, Hillel’s principal, attended a two-day meeting in Madison July 20-21 held by the Department of Public Instruction on the choice program expansion. She told The Chronicle on July 22 that the school will decide soon whether it would seek to participate in the program during the coming school year.
“We’re really trying to weigh and measure what is best for our parents, what will help them in the way that is most meaningful to them,” she said.
Rauch, however, seems more confident that TAM will participate in the coming school year. “Nothing is guaranteed,” but “It does appear that we will be in this year,” she said.
TAM administrator Trudy Farber also attended the Madison meeting. She said on July 22 she believes TAM is likely to be participating during the coming school year.
“It seems we are meeting the requirements and we are going to be making an application,” which she said is due on Aug. 1. “We’re very optimistic.”
MJDS, with about 200 students, will not participate in the choice program, principal Brian King told The Chronicle on July 21. King said the program’s rules require that schools not make admissions decision on the basis of applicants’ religions.
“Our mission is to educate Jewish children,” King said. “We’re not ready to take a step that could change the composition of our school.”
(This rule also applies to YES; but Gross said that to date, no non-Jewish students have applied to enter the school through the choice program.)
However, if some day the program were expanded to include students beyond the city of Milwaukee, “then the school would consider joining the choice program,” King said. But “I don’t see that happening,” he said.
WITS — with its about 80 high school students and about 60 post-high school students — is the only other Jewish day school located in the city of Milwaukee. But it has never participated in the choice program because of the school’s distinctive character.
“We’re a 24-7 full-time dormitory school, and most of our students come from outside Milwaukee,” said Rabbi Raphael Wachsman, one of the three WITS deans, in a telephone interview on July 20. “It is not relevant for us to be involved in [the choice program].”
Because WITS is a boarding school, it costs more to attend WITS. The school choice voucher — good for $6,442 per student — does not reduce the costs as much as it would for those paying tuition at the non-boarding Jewish day schools, Wachsman said.
However, if the school does get more students from Milwaukee, or the choice program is expanded to include students from beyond the city, “we might give [the program] a fresh look a year from now,” Wachsman said.
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