Preserving our Past Ensuring Our Future Voucher expansion

Continued from Page Three families if they would like to apply for it."

State's tax-deduction program also benefits Hillel

Hillel Academy has also started leveraging a state program approved with Ohio's 2022-23 budget, Every Child Every Family, a scholarship granting organization in which donors in Ohio may designate the private school of their choice to receive donations of up to $750 for an individual or $1,500 married/filed jointly and receive the full amount as a state tax credit.

Howie Beigelman, president and CEO of Ohio Jewish Communities — the lobbying arm of Ohio's eight Jewish Federations — says the state has expanded the tax deduction program with its 2024-25 budget.

"Funding can now be used to make up the difference between the full voucher that you're getting per child and the amount of tuition. It doesn't have to be, but it could be if you raise enough, that you can have that amount go beyond the voucher amount towards the cost of tuition."

Beigelman notes that Ohio's 202425 budget "may be the best yet for our communal priorities in all my time in Ohio."

Regarding the "massive expansion" of the state voucher program, Beigelman gives much credit to Rabbi Yitz Frank, who has served as executive director of Agudath Israel of Ohio for a decade. Agudath Israel of America is an umbrella organization of Orthodox Jewry.

Frank, who is based in Cleveland, is president of School Choice Ohio, a liaison to the Ohio Department of Education on behalf of Jewish day schools, and is acting president of the Ohio Council for American Private Education.

"Our organization has been involved for several decades in trying to expand school choice options for families in Ohio," Frank says. "The original program that was just recently expanded got started in about 2004-2005, when the now lieutenant governor, Jon Husted, was the speaker of the House. Eligibility for the program has been consistently expanded for the past decade or so.

"We got to the point where there's a critical mass of legislative leaders that want it to happen, and families around the state that wanted it to happen, and there is certainly a degree of national momentum to expand these types of programs."

He says Ohio is now one of eight states to have some version of universal voucher eligibility.

In addition to opening up more opportunities for Jewish families to send their children to Jewish day schools, Frank says that with more potential for growth, Jewish day schools will be able to plan in more strategic, intentional ways.

"Particularly among Jewish day schools in areas that are declining from a Jewish population perspective, a Jewish community/Jewish day school is going to have a difficult time growing. So maybe this can reverse some of that."

Frank estimates there are approximately 4,500 students in Ohio's 12 to 13 Jewish day schools. Most of those students, he says, are concentrated in the Cleveland area.

"While there are many in the Jewish community who have strong feelings about this program — both positively and negatively — the overall thrust of these programs is generally targeted to students that really, really need the empowerment that those scholarships provide," Frank says. "It's important to keep in mind that the vast, vast majority of the students being helped by this program are the ones that really need it the most, and that's an important value. Broadening it to make it more widely available helps sustain the program, because now you have more and more stakeholders that feel this is important and are benefitting from it."

Hillel Academy's Anna Smith says that four Hillel families have used the previous voucher system.

Beigelman says Ohio's 2024-25 budget "walks a very good line" regarding concerns he's aware of among Jews across the state.

"We always support public school funding," he says. "We have Jewish community members who use public schools, we have Jewish community members who work there, and if not for us, for our neighbors who go there. We wouldn't want to see anything happen to that.

"And that's why this is a great budget, because it does fully fund the increased funding that was required for public schools, but it also provides this support for non-public schools and that choice for parents and families."

For Hillel Academy enrollment information, contact Interim Principal Anna Smith at asmith@daytonhillel.org.

**Correction** The article Journeys to Judaism in the July Observer incorrectly stated that Ryan Lechich began studying for conversion with Beth Abraham Synagogue's Rabbi Aubrey L. Glazer at the beginning of 2023. Lechich first began exploring conversion with Glazer last summer and formally began to study for conversion with the rabbi at the beginning of 2023.