Pennsylvania has 34 Jewish day schools serving over 4,000 students, according to Teach PA, a statewide advocacy group. At the end of April, more than 200 students from many of these schools — including Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy, Kohelet Yeshiva and others in the Philadelphia area — visited the state Capitol in Harrisburg to meet with lawmakers and advocate for their needs on Teach PA’s annual Advocacy Day.
One of the lawmakers they met with was the big one: Gov. Josh Shapiro, the third Jewish governor in Pennsylvania history, himself a day school alum. (Shapiro graduated from Akiba Hebrew Academy, now Barrack, in the 1990s.) Shapiro, who includes his faith and Jewish identity as part of his public persona, delivered a strong message to the next generation of Josh Shapiros in his audience at the Capitol Rotunda.
“Don’t ever let anyone give you a hard time for being proud of who you are, for wearing your star, for telling people how you worship, for what you believe in. In this country, everyone is free to be themselves,” the governor said.
The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit
Part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed last summer, the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit offers “a federal tax credit for donating to a Scholarship Granting Organization” like a day school, according to a Teach Coalition press release. (Teach Coalition is the national arm of Teach PA, both operated by the Orthodox Union.) Taxpayers can get up to $1,700 off their tax bills for a donation of the same size.
Scholarship Granting Organizations can then use that money to give scholarships to K-12 students who live in the state and have a family income under 300% of their local area’s median income. But if the state doesn’t opt in, day schools within its borders can’t offer these scholarships. Nearly 30 states have opted in, but Pennsylvania is not one of them.
Teach PA and the student representatives lobbied Shapiro to opt in during their day at the capital. The governor’s stated position is that he wants to make sure the program doesn’t overlap with the state’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit programs. He has said he needs clear rules from the federal government to prevent wealthy donors from profiting off of different tax credits, to determine whether the state’s network and administrative bureaucracy of 250 Scholarship Granting Organizations can also apply to the federal program, to determine if federal standards are more permissive in areas like anti-discrimination measures, and to evaluate the extent to which a federal credit will direct money toward private schools and away from public schools.
Teach PA claims that Pennsylvania is leaving $3.1 billion on the table if it doesn’t opt in.
“I think our governor has an incredible opportunity on the table to help our Jewish day schools,” said Jenny Sved, the executive director of Teach PA.
The Rest of the Agenda
Tuition assistance is a point of emphasis because rising security costs are creating what Teach PA calls “tuition pressure” for day school families. A recent study cited by the group shows average security expenses have jumped 75% since 2023, rising from $58,000 to $98,000 annually. This financial strain coincides with a sharp rise in antisemitism; hate crimes against Jewish people quadrupled in the year after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
To help offset these security costs and relieve that financial burden, Teach PA and the students also advocated for increased funding for the Targeted School Safety Grants for Nonpublic Schools program. They want to raise total funding from $19.4 million to $30 million annually and the per-school cap from $75,000 to $125,000.
Jewish day schools can and often do apply for and receive grants from the state’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program. But as Sved explained, nonpublic schools also need their own program due to their specific concerns.
“A day school that has students in it all day long is different from a synagogue that might have a few members in and out throughout the day, and maybe a couple of clergy members,” she said.
The group also used Advocacy Day to promote the continuation of the Educational Improvement Tax Credit and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit, “which provide scholarships for thousands of students statewide and help families afford tuition,” said Teach PA’s release; to push for a $1 million STEM teacher initiative “to expand science and technology opportunities for nonpublic school students across Pennsylvania”; and to support the circulating memo among state senators to declare April 26-May 2 Jewish Day Schools Week in Pennsylvania.
The memo “recognizes the role of the Commonwealth’s 34 Jewish day schools in educating students, strengthening communities, and serving families across Pennsylvania, home to more than 400,000 Jewish residents,” said the release.
“So much of the political sphere is about public dollars funding public school education,” Sved said.