3 ms·

I call bullshit. I send my son to a private religious school (http://www.jcdsboston.org/ http://www.jcdsboston.org/) which is not sponsored by any synagogue of

by sethg 16y ago

I call bullshit. I send my son to a private religious school (http://www.jcdsboston.org/ http://www.jcdsboston.org/) which is not sponsored by any synagogue of millionaires. The Supreme Court declared in 1925 (Pierce v. Society of Sisters) that parents have the right to send their children to a private or religious school, and upheld in 1972 (Wisconsin v. Yoder) that parents could even get religious exemptions to state compulsory-attendance laws.

patio11 16y ago
Your school's annual operating budget is $4.5 million dollars. (Of which ~$1.2 million is subsidized by your synagogue and other fundraising.) That lets them afford a staff to do things like, e.g., keep immunization records and shuffle them around when students transfer. If they didn't, they would be shut down. One issue down, seventy two to go. I am not seeing how this makes my contentions false.
- crystalis 16y ago
  It took you less than ten minutes to notice the reply and debunk its false claims. Don't you wish people would bother to see if they were, you know, right, before they tried to call you out on something?
  - llimllib 16y ago
    and ten minutes after you posted this the guy posted a defense that at the very least passes the sniff test. You think maybe you should let an argument happen before you, you know, make snarky comments?
- sethg 16y ago
  We are not sponsored by any synagogue. (Trust me, the synagogues compete with the Jewish schools for donations.) “Other fundraising” is our fundraising. I don’t have a breakdown of my particular school’s budget, but a sample budget for a Jewish day school (http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf) estimates that about two-thirds of a school’s expenditures are going to be for personnel, and about a third of the personnel expenditures are going to be for administrative staff. I really don’t think my school spends $500K a year paying someone to shuffle immunization records around.
shpxnvz 16y ago
Neither of which address his point that creating a school is very costly, in part due to regulation and (possibly) external interference. In fact, your example supports this - the website for the very school you cited announces over $1M in annual donations to their scholarship fund alone - which is precisely the level of funding patio11 suggests is necessary.
boredguy8 16y ago
You underestimate the power of entrenched interests over municipalities, the largest of which is often zoning. Zoning regulations are fun in part because the government can (and often does) make ad hoc exemptions for public schools but provides very little leeway for public schools. http://reason.org/news/show/127456.html http://reason.org/news/show/127456.html discusses a bit of the problem. But to delve a little deeper: in California, nearly every municipality of any size requires a special-use permit or conditional use permit (CUP) to build a school. There is no "school" zoning code. Almost never are such permits granted in industrial use areas, despite sometimes being locations that might have little to no risk. That means the school functionally has to get a CUP in a residential zone. Which residents often don't like because, even for a small school, it means a substantial increase in traffic. This is doubly difficult because not only does the school have to fight to receive zoning, but trivial-to-place legal challenges can lead to a huge expense. For instance, challenging zoning for environmental reasons is nearly trivial but an extended environmental impact report alone can cost millions of dollars. So there's a substantial risk involved in the launch without any option for a quick buyout. Remember, these are almost all 501(c)(3) institutions (I don't know of any that aren't, but I could imagine there are).

by sethg 16y ago

patio11 16y ago

Your school's annual operating budget is $4.5 million dollars. (Of which ~$1.2 million is subsidized by your synagogue and other fundraising.) That lets them afford a staff to do things like, e.g., keep immunization records and shuffle them around when students transfer. If they didn't, they would be shut down. One issue down, seventy two to go. I am not seeing how this makes my contentions false.

crystalis 16y ago
It took you less than ten minutes to notice the reply and debunk its false claims. Don't you wish people would bother to see if they were, you know, right, before they tried to call you out on something?
- llimllib 16y ago
  and ten minutes after you posted this the guy posted a defense that at the very least passes the sniff test. You think maybe you should let an argument happen before you, you know, make snarky comments?
sethg 16y ago
We are not sponsored by any synagogue. (Trust me, the synagogues compete with the Jewish schools for donations.) “Other fundraising” is our fundraising. I don’t have a breakdown of my particular school’s budget, but a sample budget for a Jewish day school (http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf http://www.peje.org/docs/samplebudget.pdf) estimates that about two-thirds of a school’s expenditures are going to be for personnel, and about a third of the personnel expenditures are going to be for administrative staff. I really don’t think my school spends $500K a year paying someone to shuffle immunization records around.

shpxnvz 16y ago

Neither of which address his point that creating a school is very costly, in part due to regulation and (possibly) external interference. In fact, your example supports this - the website for the very school you cited announces over $1M in annual donations to their scholarship fund alone - which is precisely the level of funding patio11 suggests is necessary.

boredguy8 16y ago

You underestimate the power of entrenched interests over municipalities, the largest of which is often zoning. Zoning regulations are fun in part because the government can (and often does) make ad hoc exemptions for public schools but provides very little leeway for public schools. http://reason.org/news/show/127456.html http://reason.org/news/show/127456.html discusses a bit of the problem. But to delve a little deeper: in California, nearly every municipality of any size requires a special-use permit or conditional use permit (CUP) to build a school. There is no "school" zoning code. Almost never are such permits granted in industrial use areas, despite sometimes being locations that might have little to no risk. That means the school functionally has to get a CUP in a residential zone. Which residents often don't like because, even for a small school, it means a substantial increase in traffic. This is doubly difficult because not only does the school have to fight to receive zoning, but trivial-to-place legal challenges can lead to a huge expense. For instance, challenging zoning for environmental reasons is nearly trivial but an extended environmental impact report alone can cost millions of dollars. So there's a substantial risk involved in the launch without any option for a quick buyout. Remember, these are almost all 501(c)(3) institutions (I don't know of any that aren't, but I could imagine there are).