A new tuition assistance program for first-time families is being introduced at Cranford Lower School Campus of Solomon Schechter School of Essex and Union.
January 24, 2008
Hoping to attract new students, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union is offering 50 percent tuition breaks for first-time enrollees at its lower school in Cranford for the 2008-09 school year.
If the guaranteed tuition assistance program proves successful over the next few years, officials said, it will also be introduced at the Conservative institution’s lower school on its West Orange campus, which also houses its middle and upper schools.
Through the program, families with a child entering classes this September — and with no children previously enrolled at the school — will be eligible for 50 percent tuition assistance for the year.
The offer applies only to one child; other children will be eligible for the normal tuition assistance offered at the school in this and subsequent years.
The cost of pre-kindergarten at the Cranford school is $10,900, with $5,450 offered in assistance. Kindergarten costs $14,750, with $7,375 in assistance offered. That can be spread out over the child’s first two years at the school.
There is no income eligibility test for the new program, though later tuition assistance is income-based.
SSDS of Essex and Union president Mark Lederman said that the impetus for the new program came from two sources — a consultant who was brought in to consider new options for the school as it underwent a change of principal last year, and parents already involved in the school.
“There was a big push from the Cranford parents,” Lederman said. “They felt that the children have a better environment when the classrooms are more filled.”
The Cranford campus was added in 1979, and has about 80 students in grades pre-kindergarten through five.
As for funding the plan, the consultant had pointed out that even students paying reduced tuition bring in additional income, and costs remain more or less the same. “Everything is already in place — the staff, the classrooms, the equipment,” Lederman said. “This just helps us bring the school up to capacity.”
There was some concern about how those paying fees would feel about others being offered a financial break. “We asked, and the unanimous response was that they would feel fine,” Lederman said. That reflects the school’s basic identity, he added. “It was started by parents who came together because they felt it was important for their children to have a Jewish education and then worked very hard to make it work. That’s what they’re still doing.”
Mark Lederman, president of Solomon Schechter School of Essex and Union, said a new tuition assistance program for children entering the Cranford Lower School is intended to encourage more families to try out the Conservative Jewish school.
Enrollment in the Schechter schools has been dipping slightly over the past few years, he said.
“There hasn’t been a dramatic drop, more of a slow trickle of decline, especially in the lower grades. And Cranford has drawn students from a very wide area, even from as far afield as Bridgewater,” where he and his family live, “and it has become harder to recruit people from those areas.”
Word of the new program is being spread through advertisements, announcements, and word of mouth. The hope is that once people see what the school is like, they will be more inclined to keep their children there — as Lederman and his wife did. Their three children — one now in college, one a junior in high school and one in sixth grade — have all been in the Schechter system and all have made the one-hour commute each way to Cranford.
“We used to say they didn’t complain because they never knew anything different,” he said with a laugh.