By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Area Jewish day schools will be trying to do more with less next year as a result of a drop in funding from the Samis Foundation. The foundation, which provides grants to support Jewish education in the Puget Sound area, let the schools know more than a month ago that their 2004-2005 allocations would be down. The precise amounts were not known until late March, when the foundation board met and made the final allocation decisions.
Overall, the grant reductions mean that average support for the schools, which include the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle, the Seattle Hebrew Academy, the Seattle Jewish Community School and the Menachem Mendel Seattle Cheder, is going from approximately 30 percent of their operating expenses to 27 percent. While that remains a substantial source of support, Rabbi Rob Toren, Samis’ grant director, acknowledged that it is a difficult blow to the schools at a time when their costs are rising and many parents are facing harder financial circumstances themselves. Samis deals with Northwest Yeshiva High School differently than the other schools that receive grants so it can charge a below-market tuition. This program has been in effect since 1996, during which time NYHS has more than doubled its enrollment.
Noting that high school education is especially expensive, the board agreed to reduce their allocation by 5 percent this year. With the funding, the next school year’s tuition at NYHS will be $5,700, though the annual cost per student of education is $17,500. Other area private high schools charge over $14,000 per year.
Toren said to be as fair as possible, the board used a somewhat complex formula to determine each school’s allocation for the fiscal year that begins on July 1.
Since 2001, the foundation has provided dollars for tuition assistance based a on formula that takes into account both the numbers of students who need help paying for their place in the school and the amount of help those families need. Since those numbers tend to fluctuate from one year to the next, Toren said they chose to use a three-year average, “addressing occasional inequities among schools in any given year,” rather than starting from the 2003-4 grants. The total contribution to the “tuition assessment grants” for all the schools combined was 9.25 percent less than the previous year.
Since 2001, Samis has contributed more than $5 million for tuition assistance programs for students at the four elementary and middle schools, averaging over $1.7 million per year. That money covered an average of 90 percent of the estimated need for scholarships and other need-based assistance. The remaining 10 percent was handled by the individual schools, maintaining their commitment to not to turn away children for financial reasons.
Because the funding decisions are made months in advance of the school year to allow for budgeting processes, the percentage of the need being met at each school has fluctuated from under 80 percent to slightly more than was needed by one school last year.
In addition to spending approximately $3.2 million this year for tuition assistance and general operations, Samis provided the schools with approximately $426,000 for employee benefits—mostly health insurance for the teachers—and $335,000 in non-benefits grants. For the coming year, those amounts will be just under $384,000 and $305,000, respectively. Toren acknowledged this will place an added strain on the schools, since health care coverage has been rising at double-digit rates every year. He noted that even if the economy had remained stable for the last few years, the foundation would not have been able to keep pace with the rise in health insurance premiums.
In recent years, Toren said, Samis has given each of the schools a multi-year commitment to funding for development directors, to help them boost their own fundraising over and above what they receive form the foundation.
“We hope that will help a little bit,” he said. “Even three or four years ago, when we were looking at a very different economy and anticipating more income, it was never our intention to be the only financial support of the schools. Every foundation is looking for other financial partners and don’t want to be in the position of being the sole funder of a program.”
In the first year, he said, Samis paid 100 percent of the development directors’ salaries, dropping to 75 percent in the second year, with the intention of gradually weaning the schools from foundation support for the position as they became more established within their own institutions. Samis has also set up matching grants as a way to help the schools leverage their own fundraising efforts.
“No one thinks that is any kind of magic bullet—that, all of a sudden, the schools will be able to replace Samis funding with their own dollars,” Toren said. “We would love to think that was the case, but we know that’s not going to happen.”
The Samis Foundation was founded by local real estate magnate Sam Israel in 1987 to support Jewish education and enhance the quality of life in the Jewish communities throughout Washington and in Israel. The foundation manages the holdings of the Samis Land Company, which controls some 500 properties acquired by Israel during his lifetime. The proceeds from the real estate business, which includes 14 buildings in Seattle’s Pioneer Square area, are distributed as grants by the foundation. About 80 percent of the foundation’s annual giving is in direct support for the Jewish day schools in the Seattle area. For the coming year, that percentage will actually rise to over 88 percent, despite the total dollars going down. In addition, Samis has given Seattle Hebrew Academy’s capital campaign a $4 million matching grant to help repair damage to the school’s historic Capitol Hill building sustained in the Nisqually Earthquake.
The remaining Samis grants fund a variety of programs both in Washington and in the State of Israel, including environmental and wildlife projects, immigrant assistance and ongoing support for families of Israeli Defense Force members.
The reductions in funding are a direct result of a drop-off in income from real estate in the Seattle area over the past two years. In all, this year the Samis Foundation distributed $3,796,753, including $50,000 for Jewish camping programs and $430,000 for programs in Israel. In the coming year they will allocate $3,133,926, including $345,000 for Israeli programs, a reduction of slightly less that 17.5 percent. For FY2006, they project another 10.28 percent reduction, to $2,811,671 total, with an estimated $293,000 going to Israel.
In February, when the schools were told to expect the cuts that were finalized last month, representatives from all of the affected institutions made a point of expressing their understanding of the situation and praising the foundation of its continued support.