Mensch Academy Sliding Scale Tuition

In the 2023-24 school year, Mensch Academy will cost approximately $350,000 to run. Tuition generates about $160,000 meaning that Mensch Academy will run a projected deficit of $190,000. Historically, Mishkan has covered this deficit from our general operating budget.

We are committed to paying our full-time and part-time staff a competitive wage for our sector. We now have two full-time Mensch Academy staff, and seven part-time staff, the majority of whom work an average of 15-25 hours per week during the school year. These hours are used for teachers to plan lessons, receive professional development, and document the work of the students, which is essential to our responsive teaching philosophy. Documenting students’ encounters with text and their interpretations of Jewish ideas and values helps them to see themselves not just as as inheritors of a tradition, but as active players in a living culture. By empowering our Jewish learners, students are prepared to continue interpreting Jewish ideas and rituals beyond their time at Mensch Academy. 

This is in contrast to many other religious schools, which employ teachers for many fewer hours, provide little to no professional development to teachers, and use mostly pre-made curricula. By paying teachers a living wage and providing regular and responsive professional development and training, we are able to consistently retain our teaching team, meaning students benefit from more skilled and experienced teachers each year and have the opportunity to build deep relationships with their educators!

We looked at factors like class size, teacher hours, and number of sessions per year to calculate the “actual cost to educate” each student. For the “standard cost” fees we researched what similar religious school programs cost (both in Chicago and in other major cities) in order to understand the market. Our tuition is in the middle of the ranges we found, which ranged from $1000 per student to $1800 per student for second grade. In the case of synagogues that had a lower tuition, their membership fees were actually higher than our Buildership, meaning the total cost to the families (tuition + membership) was higher by an average of $750/family/year.

In a word, yes. Supporting Jewish identity formation and confidence is a resource-intensive process! We designed Mensch Academy to be aligned with Mishkan’s values, to be responsive to what families have told us they need in terms of Jewish education for their kids, and to, well, create Mensches. This takes resources and expertise. 

We are committed to not turning families away based on ability to pay, and to that end we provide over $100,000 annually in membership and tuition adjustments. The hourly cost of attending Mensch Academy ranges from $17/hour to $21/hour per student, which is on-par for many other activities and programs parents might choose to send their kids to.

Those funds will go towards supporting Mensch Academy’s general operating expenses that are not covered by tuition, making improvements to the program (for example, providing classroom aides to children with special rights so that they are better supported) and making it possible for families who need it to access sliding scale tuition.

Tuition for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 is the same.

Mensch Academy was founded in 2015 with the support of a 3-year, $50,000/year grant from one of our foundation partners. Regular foundation support ended in 2017. We are always looking for grant opportunities to help cover our expenses–if you know of any, please let us know at [email protected].