YINZ/YIDZ

Kaplan Test Prep is offering a free practice test for the SAT and ACT to area high school students on Sunday, Nov. 15 from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Pittsburgh Kaplan Center, 130 North Bellefield Avenue, Third Floor.

The practice tests include a feedback session.

For more information or to register, click here or call 1-800-KAP-TEST.

Since that posting the other day about the Baltimore Jewish Times, I've been reading through their blogs.

This morning I caught an entry from Executive Editor Phil Jacobs about education, specifically about the affordability of Jewish education. He makes that case that Baltimore Jews should use public schools for secular studies, allowing the Jewish schools to cut costs by providing only half-day Jewish studies:

Click to read more ...

We've been writing a lot lately about the funding of Jewish education in Pittsburgh, particularly the Earned Income Tax Credit. That's where the three schools get the bulk of their operating funds outside of tuition.

But there's another important source of funding. The United Jewish Federation sets aside a portion of its annual campaign every year to help fund the three Jewish day schools in the city: Community Day School, Hillel Academy and Yeshiva Schools. It divvies up that money among the schools based on a pre-set formula.

Every few years the UJF takes a look at that formula and this is one of those years.

It's still early in the process; a volunteer UJF committee has only met once so far. They looked at some different models for how a Federation type agency can allocate limited funds to multiple schools.

I spoke recently with Charles Cohen, planning manager for Jewish continuity with the UJF, who said the goal is to create a formula that addresses community-wide education needs without shorting any individual school.

But, obviously, any change to the formula means that at least one school will get a different amount of money from one year to the next. Cohen said the UJF wants to be a reliable source of funding, meaning that if it decides on changes, those changes would be phased in over several years, not implemented all at once. 

The UJF is a major source of funding for the schools, but not the largest by any means.

In fiscal year 2008, the EITC brought $2,885,445 to Jewish educational facilities in Pittsburgh.

By comparison, the UJF allocated around $690,000. Of that money, the UJF gave around $100,000 to each of school as a fixed base amount, and divided the remaining $360,000 among the schools on a per capita basis. 

For those with the inclination, here is the entire UJF spending plan — including spending for education, which covers much more than just the three day schools.

I'll have a full story in the paper this week.

UPDATE: Here it is.