Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sidney Altfield, welcome to the Opening up podcast. This is. We try to have a monthly conversation about things that are important in the world of education, Jewish education, the Jewish world.
We had. Our last guest was Rabbi Avi Weiss, and we spoke about. Because we were honoring Natan Sharadsky at our dinner, which you were so kind to attend.
So we spoke about his role kind of in the Soviet Jewry movement and the things that our kids can learn from it. So today's topic is really, really different, but a different kind of advocacy, I would say. So maybe just tell us who you are.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Sydney Altfield, we all know that already, though. Grew up in Miami, Florida. Went to Jewish day school only starting in the middle of seventh grade. So I went to public school before that, went in the middle of seventh grade. Everyone asks, you know, like, why did you switch in the middle of the year?
I honestly don't know the answer. I don't think my parents even know the answer. They just woke up one day and was like, we need to send our kids to Jewish day school. And it obviously changed the trajectory of my life.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: And.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: And, yeah, it's been what's cool did you go through. I went to Heber Academy. We played SAR in our basketball tournaments, and they won every year. So SAR won. SAR won.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Good.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Yeah. You guys won the blue. I mean, the black and the yellow. I'll never forget.
You guys won.
Yeah. I was a big student athlete growing up, and SAR was always our biggest rival when they would come down and play basketball.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: So from there to becoming the CEO of TEACH Coalition, first TEACH New York, I think, and then Teach Coalition. Tell us how that evolved for you.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So in college and growing up, I've always been involved and interested in politics. I didn't want to become a lawyer, and I also always wanted to work for the Jewish community. There was just something drawing me to that.
And I. In college, I was in student government. I was student government vice president of my university. And I knew that that was kind of like where I wanted to merge my love of Judaism, politics, government. I needed to figure out a niche place.
And so I worked for AIPAC for a little bit, and I loved my work there. And then I got a phone call one day to come and, you know, see what was going on at teach, see if it was a good fit. Inevitably, it was. And eight and a half years later, I now get to run the organization.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: And you're doing a great job.
I really have firsthand view of that, and we've spoken a lot over Especially over the last year, I think. And since you've taken over the organization, I think my first meeting with, I guess at the time was teach, New York State. I remember there was. There were a few principals that came to a meeting somewhere, and we talked about science and math teachers, like, how could we get state government to help fund science and math teachers? And to be honest, we were kind of skeptical, like, okay, this has been,
[00:02:36] Speaker B: as was everyone else we know about
[00:02:38] Speaker A: the separation of church and state, and there's no way that we're going to get funding for science and math teachers. But the conversation was also about how to do it. And we talked about whether we should be working with teachers unions or without teachers unions and different models of how to do this. But it was really a pipe dream.
And I think one of the reasons that I've been so impressed is that, you know, it's rare, unfortunately. I guess it's rare to, you know, to come to a meeting about some big idea, and then, you know, I would say maybe nine times out of 10, you know, we all go our own ways and maybe we agree to meet again. But you don't. You don't see the results as tangibly as we have with Teach. And I can tell you, you know, I've been to SAR for 21 years, and we just talked about some of these numbers before. Before we got on the air.
You know, there's still obviously a long way to go, but we are getting significant funding from New York State, from other avenues, the city, state and federal. We could talk about that, but we are getting significant funding from New York State. I'm going with you to Albany next week with a group of, hopefully around 30 people from different schools in the region.
What are the priorities? What are you trying to accomplish? What are we trying to accomplish?
[00:03:45] Speaker B: What are we. We're trying to accomplish a few things. We're actually going at a very specific time. We always go in March because that's when budget negotiations are going.
Everyone asks, you know, do you have to go at this time? Can you go a different time?
But no, March is the best time to go because that's when they're in the thick of budget negotiation. So how does the budget in New York work? The governor puts out her budget, the Senate puts out their budget, the assembly puts out their budget, and then they all sit in a room and negotiate. So you really have to have friends on every side of every side of the coin. And you need to make sure that they're hearing it from the community. They're hearing it from other politicians, they, that these are the most important things. So we go to Albany to show our support, to tell them what we need, what we want and advocate.
We can only do so much as an organization. They want to hear from the community, they want to hear from their constituents. They want to see you taking the effort to come up to Albany.
And yeah, it's an amazing experience. And that's how TEACH really was started. It was started by a group of people saying, what if we just asked for things? What would happen if we asked for money for our schools and they got something out of it? So we keep going up every single year to ask and to ask and we've been successful.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: So what are the different buckets? I mean, I know there's some terms that I'll use, but you'll help us out. This, what we call CAP amended services been going on for a long time. And then there's some of the new buckets, including stem, that we talked about. Do you feel like these are different categories or how could you explain to all of our listeners what the categories are?
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think it's really important to also understand, you know, we live in a democratic blue state and something of funding non public school education is not the first thing that comes to mind when people think of priorities for a blue state.
So we've been really strategic in making sure that politicians in New York understand that this funding that we're asking for is going to benefit the students that, that live in their district, that live in their state, and will inevitably enter into the workforce. So how do we make that happen? Is our STEM program. We want to make sure that the next future generations of people going into the workforce in New York have the tools necessary to succeed. And so the state has granted and wanted to invest in education and STEM education, not just on the public school side, but on the non public school side. And it's really been amazing to see these different pockets of funding that can, you know, that, that, that Democrats love and understand and, and feel the need to support.
They're supporting. And so that there's different buckets, there's cap, like you said, mandated services. You're a school, you take attendance, there's mandates from the state that you have to do.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: So we're fulfilling the mandate of the state to, to do attendance. We're being paid for that service.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. So the state's saying, you know, we're mandating this and we're going to pay you for that time and for what happens because it's mandated by the state.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: And that's been going on for quite some time.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: For quite some time. There's always some issues with some programs of this and that. And, and, and that's also what I say. We're the lobbyists of the schools. The schools say, oh, I haven't gotten my money yet. We'll go in, we'll figure it out. When did. When do they need to get their money? And, you know, we're really here working for the parents, for the schools, and making sure that everything available to them is given to them now.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: So, so, okay, so cap amended services. And what I understand is that the question really is really about what the number is. So it's been a long time. The state has already agreed to pay, but you could fund it X level or Y level. So that has gone up significantly. Significantly, 10 years.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Yes. And I would say one of the biggest things that really put Teach on the map at the very beginning, before we got STEM pass, before anything, was that they were not funding it enough in the past. So, so, you know, schools were applying, but they were only getting partial of what they were applying for. And in the state statute, it says that they have to pay you for these mandated services.
So I don't think anyone has ever heard of the government repaying you back what you're owed. Usually it's just a one and done. But no, we lobbied and we said, you owe us this money. And they repaid millions and millions and millions of dollars to the schools. And it was because we had a voice. We had a voice in Albany working for these schools, working for the families.
And we built a movement of them needing to listen to us, wanting to listen to us, and inevitably giving us what we ask for.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: So, you know, you talked about Democratic states and Democrats. I grew up, my father, Oliver Sholem, came from Europe and taught me and taught his congregants and the people around him a real appreciation for this country. And one of the things that he actually felt strongly about was the separation of church and state. And I remember, and this goes back, you know, a while already, but he felt like it was problematic to get the state entangled with your schools or for, you know, for the state. You know, he knows what it was like in Europe when the state was entangled with religion. What. You know, and I think he warmed up to a little bit also. I don't want to, you know, and he's certainly not here now. I think he'd probably be proud of everything I'm involved with, but that's a little biased, but tell me what the counterargument to that is and how that's developed over the years.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Of course that's, you know, that's, that's the, the foundation of the, the country in which we live in. And we're not looking to change that. But there's stem, there's arts, there's music, there's social studies, English, there's, there's non religious.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: We're not asking, we're not asking them
[00:09:03] Speaker B: teach for Tanakh, for homage, for, for anything like that.
But when, when public funds are given out to certain areas, you can't restrict on, on religion. That's religious discrimination in itself. You can't. That's one of our, that's in.
So no, we're very careful in the way in which we pass legislation to make sure that it's compliant. But there's no issue here because we're not asking the government to pay for such studies.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Okay, so let's talk about stem, because this has been. And we'll talk about some new interesting things coming up as we go on. But so STEM started. What was the first year of STEM funding?
[00:09:43] Speaker B: $5 million a little program. 2017 was the first year that it passed.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: $5 million for how many students are we talking about?
[00:09:51] Speaker B: 400,000 DOL. Non public students. Well, that's K through 12 and the program starts at third grade so around.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: But basically 400,000 non public school students in New York state. Of which how many. That's 14% of the students are students in our community.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Roughly. I would say a third of that. 33.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Yeah, about a third of the, of the non public school students are going to Jewish schools. And then what else do you have?
[00:10:13] Speaker B: You have other private schools, Catholic schools, non denominational. You have Islamic schools, Greek Orthodox.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: I would say 80% though are religious based, non public schools.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Okay, $5 million. Which has grown to 85.5 this year.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: This year? Well, we're waiting for the final budget negotiation.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: I mean. I guess.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Oh, so last budget, 85.5. We're advocating this year for full funding of the program. Full funding means that every dollar that's applied for, it's able to fund right now. It's prorated. There's not enough money in the pot. So they take what they, what are applied for and they prorate it. If it was full funding, it would be at $130 million.
So we go up to Albany and we ask for big things and you know, we'll land, we'll land somewhere And
[00:10:59] Speaker A: I know I could say for sar, I think we were approaching a million dollars of funding for stem, that science and math teachers primarily. And there's a whole calculus about, about how that works. And of course, as you kind of alluded to, it's a reimbursement based on also how many people apply. So if more schools know about it and more schools apply and more teachers are qualified, which is also part of what Teach has done. I think you've helped some of our teachers and some teachers in other places have the proper. They might be excellent teachers, but don't technically have the qualifications that are required for this reimbursement. So we've also helped. You've also helped people get those qualifications, which is, first of all, investing in those teachers, which is great. And it's also investing in the schools.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Absolutely. And, you know, Teach really wants to see everything and wants to help in all areas of this. You know, we advocate, we have lobbyists, we go to Albany, we bring the community, we do the grassroots. But there's a whole piece of the puzzle of, okay, now that the laws are passed, how do I get this money and how does this happen? Who's going to help me figure this out? So we have an entire group or entire staff of people that's working directly with the schools to fill out the grants, to make sure they're getting all the money to make sure that nothing's left on the table. So we really, from soup to nuts, start to finish, we make sure that everything.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Obviously, a lot of paper, a lot of people say that's just the way it works, right?
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Yeah. But when you create the programs like stem, you create the applications, you create everything. So we're really the experts in it because it was. It was our program, our baby, and we're really excited that it's grown. It's one of the fastest growing programs in New York State in the state budget.
And it's. It's amazing. Now, New Jersey has its own version of New York of STEM funding.
It's a little different, but it's.
It's modeled off of this program.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: And TEACH Coalition works in how many states?
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Seven.
Five Democratic, two Republican.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: New York, New Jersey, New York, New
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Nevada and Florida.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Got it. Okay. So you found places where, I guess either it's ripe for success or there are a lot of Jewish students.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Both.
We cover 90% of the Jewish day school population in those states.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: In those states. Any other states coming up, or are
[00:13:06] Speaker B: we not allowed to release those as of right now? No. We're very, very on this federal scholarship program, which I'm sure we'll talk about and then we'll see what happens. The door's not closed, it's cracked, I would say.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Well, there's certainly a lot to do with those.
So last year, I guess it was March, we're in Albany, we met with the governor, that was the last meeting.
And you had prepped us for the meeting. And there was a discussion about school lunch being funded.
And just to give, you know, to give our listeners, I guess, you know, a concrete example of how things, how I think our voice really matters. It was not at all a given that this was going to happen. And even at that meeting, you know, it was important she spoke about it. She was obviously, she was also prepped for the, for the meeting. And she's been thinking about the budget, obviously. And when the budget was passed, it came in with I think $300 million.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: It was some hovering around there. And I will say we worked very, very closely with the main healthy school meals advocates. And at the very beginning of our conversations, the non public school community was not on their radar. So they were obviously very focused on public schools, public school districts, what does that look like for them? And I said, there's a whole group of people that take that some schools in non public schools, you know, are eligible for free reduced lunch already.
What are we doing about them? So we really brought our voice for the non public school community to the table and they've been included ever since.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Okay, that's great. And this has been something. We're on a learning curve. I was just talking about this is. They've had this before because it's just a few months old for us. And you know, when you do get funding from the government for your food, you obviously have to follow the rules of, you know, of how that food is served, making sure the kids are eating healthy, which is obviously a goal of ours anyway, but just making sure that we do it correctly. How many schools are doing this now roughly, do you know?
[00:14:58] Speaker B: I don't know. I know it's a lot of question. It's a lot. It's the first year of the program, but I would say more schools than you would think. And I do know that you. Because it happened very fast this year, we have a lot of inquiries for starting next year. So it'll tick up. And in this year's budget, the governor is asking for more money in the program to expand it for more schools.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: And normally if something is already in. So we assume that's gonna stay in. The question is at what level? So it's not like we should worry. I mean, we could worry, but always worry.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: Never, ever, ever. Number one rule in politics, never keep your guard up, no matter what.
It is very difficult for are successful to take things away unless you do bad things and they don't like you. But that's not the case that we're in.
But yeah, now you just have to fight to keep. To keep it going up. But that's what we do. We fight to keep it going up.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: So that was really, really a great, A great success. I know that I don't think we're gonna have time to talk about it, but I know there's also work on, similar to STEM to arts and music, which was funded at a.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: It was funded at $5 million. And I think everyone was like, okay, you did your, your biggest STEM passage. You're never gonna get anything else. And we went in and we said, no, fund art and music. And we're very good. I probably shouldn't give away all of our secrets, but we're very good at reading what is trending and what's going on. And STEM at the time was very high and important, and people were talking about it.
And then at the time when we passed art and music, there was a lot of talk of mental health, and we tied it in of how art and music really helps kids with their creativity and their mental health and this and that.
And so we got that passed as well.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: Before we talk about the federal bill, I want to ask a question that you might turn right back on me, which if you do, we'll figure that out. But, you know, tuition.
School's expensive, and it's still expensive. And even if it's, as we talked about before, it may be 2 to 4% of a school's budget, but in raw numbers or in raw numbers, those are significant numbers. And those have grown over the years.
But I, you know, and I'll include sir in this. I don't know of many schools that lower their tuition from one year to the next. So you're getting more outside funding. Tuition is still a challenge for our, for our parents. You know, how would we, how do we explain that?
[00:17:15] Speaker B: There's. There was actually a study from Nishmah a few years ago asking about issues in the Jewish community. And they, they surveyed modern Orthodox, conservative reform, all, all the spectrums. And the number one issue across all of them was tuition affordability, Jewish day school affordability.
But it was very, very low on the list when it came to, well, what do you. Philanthropically, what do you give? And it was, you know, all these are the organizations that, you know, granted, are very important, but why didn't that match up?
I think, and that was actually done before, before October 7th, I think, and I've always said the continuity of the Jewish people lies within Jewish education. Even before October 7, although now everyone became it. That's become the tagline of post October 7, which is. Which is it's granted, it should be, but I think people never knew that there was something that they could do about it. Now that people are recognizing that there's something they can do about it, things are moving quicker. But I do think that with inflation going up, and I know SAR is very generous in putting this in there in their tuition letters, you know, inflation goes up 8%, we're raising it 2% because of this extra pillow that we have, cushion that we have.
But no, it's not going down. We're working with schools to make sure that it stays at levels that are. That are, you know, manageable.
But there's. There's still things in the works that, that we're trying to ensure.
Keep going into schools and getting better. Your schools are getting better, your schools are getting more STEM money, your schools are getting better teachers, that it really exponentially changing your tuition.
And there's new things on the horizon that we're still working to push, but it is a huge, huge issue in the community, and it's nothing to take lightly, and we're gonna keep working on it until it happens.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Very fair. And I think that, number one, it has allowed the rate of increase to be, you know, I don't want to say reasonable, because again, the tuition is a very, very big burden for anybody within our community, for many people in our community. But, you know, if the rate of increase is, you know, is 3% or 2% instead of 5%, which it might have been otherwise, with health insurance going up significantly, with the fact that teachers, you know, to attract quality teachers, you need to be able to pay them in competitive rates. And, you know, so it's not that it's all dollar for dollar going right back to our families, but it is being invested in the system. I think it's everyone's job, you know, the community to work together with the school to work as a unified front to make sure that, you know, obviously every dollar is spent efficiently, et cetera. But I do think it's something that whenever we're asked by you or we think about on Our own to put out these great success letters. We recognize, you know, that that doesn't always translate into the fact that or that often doesn't translate into the fact that this is an easy thing. You know the commitment to put your kids through Jewish day school is, is a big commitment and is a big burden. I think I call it an investment because I think you are investing in your kids future and I think we believe in this. But that certainly doesn't make it easy. But I would say that without this support it would be much more challenging. It would be much more challenging to find, to attract quality. It would be much more challenging to keep the paces, the rates of increase as you say, manageable.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: If they are, I will say the return on investment in, in you know, leveraging government dollars is.
We have about, we have about a teach, has a teach. NYS has about a 3 million dollar budget and they are able to turn that into half a billion dollars coming out of the state. So you do the math, you tell me if it's worth it. And it's worth it. It's that money is going up and up and up without having to pull so many resources from the community. There's so many amazing organizations that are you know, making grants and giving and fundraising and foundations and this. But that's inevitably coming from the community. So this whole bucket of money of leveraging government dollars that is entitled to us, it's a no brainer to go after it.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: I will say that, you know, I've told you this and I told your predecessor that you know, what we pay to support your work through the school community is really something that we feel really, really happy to pay because it is completely an investment that's been, that's been worth it every single year. You know, including this year with what we talked about a minute ago at lunch. I mean there's nothing to talk about in terms of the value. Who are the other allies? I mean it's not just the Jewish school talk about the allies.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: We've built an incredible interfaith coalition.
Like I said earlier, 80% of the non public schools are faith based schools. So really the majority of people going to non public school schools are going for the same reasons most likely. And in Judaism we know that to be true. It's a non negotiable. We're going to send our kids to Jewish day school. Whether we have to scrape the bottom of the barrel in our own families or the school needs to raise extra money to, for scholarships. Kids are going to go to Jewish Day school. So we're very, very happy and proud to be working with the Catholic Conference, the Islamic School association, and having a unified voice and showing them that this is important to the communities of all faiths, because this is the cornerstone, the cornerstone of our communities.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: You know, one of the things that I learned on the first trip to Albany a bunch of years ago and last year again, is to, is to see how small it is, so to speak. Like, you know, you know, sometimes you think of government as this, like, untouchable big behemoth. And in many ways it might be. And certainly federal government is, might be harder to access in, certainly in certain ways. But these are just people. I mean, they're good people.
Hopefully they should all be good people. But they're their representatives, they're our representatives. And they actually are, you know, I think in a good way accountable to us, to the voters, to their constituents. But they have to obviously know that we exist. And I think that one thing that I've learned from you and from your organization is the importance of building these relationships. These are people who live in Albany half the time and they live in their districts half the time.
And you can actually have them over at your home and they can talk about their priorities and they can learn your priorities and you can develop relationships with people. And hopefully this is not just transactional. I think that's important to say. I think that, you know, I've also learned just about the importance of connecting and knowing about the issues in our broader community. And that, you know, it is a two way street. But we've gotten to know, you know, I would say, you know, you have to know who your state assembly person is. You have to know who your state senator is, you have to know who your city council members are.
And you know, I don't think that everybody knows.
Talk about that a little bit in terms of what you want all of our, wherever they live, all of our listeners to be aware of.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: It's interesting. 90% of education funding comes from the states. So people think, oh, the federal government has all the money. That's where all the action is. If you're talking about education money and you know, your potholes and this and that, really it's coming from the states. And in your state assembly, your state senators, they really hold most of the cars and like you said, they're very approachable and they're very easy to access and they want to meet you, they want to know about, you know, what you're, what you're doing and what's Important to their constituents and their communities because they're beholden to you. I would also say that my very first few days, I mean, my first few years at teach, I was constantly meeting new assembly members and senators and bringing them to the schools to see firsthand. And the amount of times an assembly member or a senator said, this is the first time I've been to Jewish state school and this is not what I thought it was.
And I was just like, oh my gosh, look, this is what it is. And they had just no idea of what was going on behind these doors. They see things that they read and that they hear and that they see.
And when they come and they see, it's a vibrant community and an amazing education, they want to continue to invest in that. They want to continue to support that.
So really bridging the gap of community and politicians is the core of what we do and why we're so successful at it.
Because the politicians want to.
They like me, like, I hope so. But they don't want to hear from me. They want to hear from you. They want to hear from your parents, they want to hear from the kids.
It's really about them feeling that this is important to the community and saying, I want to help my community and this is it.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: We had an example last week. There was a bill in city council. So this is local city government, not state government, but it was an important bill about school safety and shule safety. And our city council member was in touch with me and was in touch with us and said, can we have students and can we have teachers or principals come testify and join the city council hearing? And again, just knowing that there's this kind of two way relationship there where it's just important for them to know you and for you to know them. And also, frankly, the civics lesson that these kids get, they missed a day of school. But they testified at city council and actually the members were really impressed, really moved by what they have to say.
And again, I think, you know, on many levels, what would you ask, what would you suggest that schools do? Schools who are just learning about this.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: So we used to do big trips to Albany. I wish we could go back and do. We used to bring a thousand kids. Snow would get in the way. And it wasn't always the easiest thing to, you know, to handle. But we still have done a few one off trips with schools. When they want to go to Albany, they call us and they say, can you put together a day? We're putting together a day for a school Next week.
But it's so, it's so accessible. It's a two and a half hour drive. It's not far.
And the kids, I think at the end of the day, they love it. They want to go meet the people.
The Capitol building itself is gorgeous. If you're a Harry Potter fan, I feel it's very Hogwarts esque. It's really beautiful.
But yeah, I would say really teach your kids at a very young age or students at a very young age the importance of civic engagement, of voting, of becoming friendly with your politicians, asking for things, calling up their offices, telling them what you feel, sending action alerts. It's really important that that's instilled within us at a very young age and our kids because we don't want to wake up when it's too late. And we want to be able to continue this momentum that we have within the Jewish community and being active in the political process.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: Okay, let's talk about what might be the most important thing that we haven't spoke about yet. So federal government.
Federal bill that's already passed. It's already passed that could, should hopefully will impact all of our schools. But we're going to talk about its impact on New York.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: Tell us about this bill.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: So there was a bill that was passed in July and in the federal government and it is a tax credit scholarship program. A federal tax credit scholarship program.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Not a tax deduction.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Not a tax deduction. A one for one tax credit. So instead of paying the government your federal taxes, you can siphon off seventeen hundred dollars and send it to a scholarship granting organization.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: So it costs the taxpayer nothing because either they're giving that money to the irs.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: To the irs, or they give it to an sgi.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: That's what a tax credit is.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: So as long as people understand, trust and understand that it works, it's going
[00:28:42] Speaker B: to be a lot of education.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Taxpayer is zero.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: And then seven. And you give that $70 to your
[00:28:48] Speaker B: school or to, to a scholarship granting organization.
It's a 501c3 organization that will be created in states, nationally, whatever, you know, whatever pans out to be. But it is essentially. And they exist already, they're scholarship granting organizations for state programs. In Florida there's scholarship granting organizations.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Okay. Just on the state level. Pennsylvania, we talked about Pennsylvania.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: Yeah, there's in Nevada.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: But now this is a federal program.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: But now this is a federal program. You the, you know, to get into the nitty gritty of the rules, you have to have a separate SGO so new SGOs will be popping up, but it's a scholarship granting organization. It's a 501C3. They collect all the $1700 from all that they can. They raise money into this pot of money, whether it's designated, not designated. We don't need to get into the specifics unless you want to. But they basically raise all this money and then they're able to give out scholarships based on that money. Someone says, how much is the scholarship going to be?
There's no, there's. That's up to the SGO to figure out. There's. The government isn't saying you. Like in Florida you only get $8,000 right? Here it's just you get to fundraise
[00:29:53] Speaker A: the taxes as long as you qualify. So, so let's. So on the revenue side, we, I think we just. I think we understand. Seventeen hundred dollars per person or per family? Per.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: We're waiting for the regulations. Unclear.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Let's call it.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Let's call it seventeen hundred dollars per person.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: Fine. Seventeen hundred dollars a person that can go into, into the SGO from any taxpayer in the country, not even in the state.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Which. Okay, we'll talk about what that means in a second. But anybody in the country can give Once a year $700 at no cost to them to go to this big pot. Can they, can they designate it to a particular school?
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Yes. They cannot designate it to a student, but they can designate it to a school.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Okay, so that's on the revenue side. So. Right. So just do the simple math. If we get a thousand people to do that, that's one point.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: $1.77 million.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: That's right. Okay, I got it right. $1.7 million. And then it goes up from there. And theoretically it's really just a question of getting people's attention to do it. But again, at no cost.
Now, on the other side of it right now is who gets this?
Everybody's eligible to get this money.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: So 300. If your income is 300% above the median income of the area of your
[00:31:07] Speaker A: county, where you live or where your school is.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Good question. We're waiting for the regulations on that. And see, it's very good that teaches at the table. So we, we sit on advisory boards in the federal government that give recommendations to the IRS for this program.
And we brought this up and it's very specific to our community. We have people who live in New York, travel from, who send their kids to new schools in New Jersey and vice versa, live in New York, send their kids. So where is, is the student located? Is the student located in New Jersey or is the student located in New York? And we didn't, we missed the caveat that every governor has to opt into the program. So if the New York governor opts in, but New Jersey doesn't, can the New Jersey student who goes to school in New York receive the scholarship?
[00:31:53] Speaker A: Right. So we're going to get to our argument with the governor in a second. But, but what you just said was that, okay, depending on whether it's where you live or where the school is, but in that general area, let's say 300% of the median income income, which basically means that it's going to impact a lot of people who are already on financial aid or on scholarship from our schools and some who might not even be on financial aid but will still qualify for this. And once they qualify, then you're saying the amount that they get is not going to be mandated by the system, it's going to be mandated by the
[00:32:27] Speaker B: SGO based on how much they can
[00:32:29] Speaker A: raise that they have, that they're able to raise. So our listeners can get a sense of how big this could potentially be. And now let's talk about what we're going to speak to the governor about next week. So this is not a vote of the Assembly. It's not a vote of the Senate. It's one person's decision.
But there will be pressure on that
[00:32:49] Speaker B: person, of course, on both sides.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: On both sides of this decision. So what, how does it look in the country now? Because this is a federal program.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: So I'm pretty sure if I'm correct, all, all Republican governors have opted into the program.
One Democratic governor, Jared Polis out of Colorado, has opted into the program.
There have been some Democratic governors that have recently have in the past said that they will not be opting in. And a few, as of just very recently have kind of walked back their and have said, we're going to wait for the regulations and then we'll give you a deciding, a deciding answer.
All of the Democratic governors in which we work with the five blue states that we work in, New York, New Jersey, California, Maryland and Pennsylvania, we have great relationships with all these governors. I think, you know, when teach was starting out, the very beginning, it was skeptical of like, you know, everything's in the federal government. Why do you need such good state relations? And look at where we are today. You need the governor.
So we're in a very good spot in all of our states because we've been Doing this for a very long time.
And governors want to wait to see what the regulations look like, which we do not hold against them.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: I, this is all new.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: I mean it's all new to everyone.
Exactly. They want to see. I, I, you know, I, I, I tell them frankly, I'm like, I agree, you don't want to play a game unless you see the rules of the game. So you want to see what you're playing, which makes sense. But we are really, really working to educate the governors and the people that surround them and their employees, important decision makers of why this program is so, as Jared Polis in Colorado says, a no brainer for them to opt into. It does not cost the state anything. It is all federal dollars and we are obviously looking at it as a, on a lens for our Jewish day schools, our non public schools. But public school students can take money, scholarships for this.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: But they, where does it go for, for tutoring?
[00:34:47] Speaker B: So tutoring, after school care, uniforms, electronics, special needs services, they could also get
[00:34:54] Speaker A: from the same pot of federal tax credit money.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: Correct, correct. And the number one thing on every governor's mind, Democrat, Republican, everyone right now is affordability. Affordability, affordability, affordability. So why on earth would we have our governors turning down federal money flowing into the states that's going to not just help our families.
It could, it could and we can get to that. It's not just going to help the families, but it's going to help businesses thrive. You know, we've been talking to not only education people, but we've been talking to chambers of commerce saying this is going to boost your businesses, your small tutoring groups, your electronic shops in your, in your district. It's going to help different, you know, uniforms and SAT prep and all the different things. It's going to huge, really, really increase the marketplace of education spending without a cost to the state.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: How could you tell our audience how important this is? I mean we've tried to describe it in mathematical terms and give everyone a sense of how this works, but the impact of this or the potential, again,
[00:36:03] Speaker B: the potential is huge and there's so much numbers, we don't know, we don't know how many donors are actually going to give the money because it's so a lot of people need to learn
[00:36:12] Speaker A: this how will impact fundraising potentially.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: We don't know how much it will, it will impact. We don't know exactly how many taxpayers there are and we don't know if it's 3400 or 1700. So there's a Lot of unknowns. But what we do know is that it is going to be a massive program.
Once it is moving along in the right direction in the sense that, you know, the first year it's going to be figuring it out and getting people to buy into it and understand it. But once it's going.
This is something that the Jewish community has been asking for for a very long time, especially in blue states where, you know, I said that the seven states that we operate in are 90% of the Jewish day school population. Those five blue states are 85% of the Jewish day school population. So you're talking about blue states that necessarily would have never had a tax credit program or a voucher program or anything for school choice.
Now there's an opportunity for these states to take part in something that is not touching their budgets because that's always their fear is money going into and is taking away from the state.
It's something that we never thought would be possible in a blue state that's actually possible now. And it's not only going to help Jewish day school students, it's going to help, you know, Jewish day school students across the country in affording education and maybe now having Jewish education as a thought that, okay, now that I can afford it, maybe I can go.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: So we're gonna have to make this. I mean, the governor's obviously heard about it already, but we're gonna make this argument to the governor next week and hopefully, hopefully by the end of the day it'll be a no brainer for her too. But it's gonna be obviously a heavy lift and we're gonna absolutely do our best to get there.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: When we say it's the number one issue in our community, we need to express that to her that this is the answer to that.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Okay. Anything that we missed, anything else on our agenda for next week that we're, I mean, I think we covered everything.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's amazing.
I will say, if I could say one last thing, the work that we do is only as benef is only as strong and as good as our partners. And when we have partners like SAR and you and your parents and your community, it really makes the work just that much easier for us and better. And it's really a grassroots community movement.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Well, again, on behalf of all of our parents and our school committee, we want to say thank you to you and to all the people that work at TEACH to to make this happen. And hopefully, you know, this, this conversation will just be one of, one of the things that will allow more people that don't yet know enough about the work that you do, the important work that you do for all of us just to become known. So hopefully we'll have a great trip to Albany next week.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: All the listeners will be coming back soon.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: We have two more spots left, not tonight, but a couple of spots left to join this lobbying mission. It's a one day mission where we get there Tuesday night and we're gone by Wednesday, late afternoon.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And make sure you have a full day of work Tuesday. You'll come up Tuesday night for dinner and we'll get home before dinner on Wednesday night.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: Okay. If this gets out before then, maybe we'll get a couple more. More people to join. Thank you very much for all that you're doing, for spending time with us today.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: Of course.
