Skip to main content

Again. Ugh. Pain. Tuition-Related Depression.

NOTHING makes me say ugh like the annual round of tuition-begging.

And with the delivery of our Notices of Assessment from Revenue Canada, verifying our income (or lack thereof), the time is upon us.

Upon me.  It’s my job.

So I sit here, in a lethargic stupour.  Wishing for death.  Maybe not death, perhaps just solvency? 

But I’m sure the feeling is similar.

I have filled out just about the exact SAME six-page financial disclosure every single year for the last ELEVEN years.  Eleven!

Why does anybody believe this humiliating full disclosure each and every year keeps people honest?  Why not make it easier with a shorter form if your humiliating circumstances have not miraculously changed?  Like, you haven’t won a lottery?

Imagine the checklist:

  • “Is your husband is still in the same dead-end job (no pun intended)?
  • Is your house is still 70 years old and crumbling - oh, and WAY too small?
  • Is your car is the same cheap one your father bought you before he crumbled?
  • Have your kids stayed put, not been born, turned 18 or won lotteries of their own?
  • Is your annual family getaway four days in your brother-in-law’s house near Ottawa?
  • Finally, has the cost of living not gone down but, as always, up, up, UP…?”

“This year, we will no longer make the assumption that you are hiding your secret reservoir of funds from us, the standard-bearers of quality Jewish education!”

Seriously.  Why not a “short form” where you simply certify, to the best of your financial and halachic ability, that things haven’t really changed? 

Then, as on the full-length form, at the bottom of the simplified form, you’d write in the magic number you can’t really afford to pay but you’re scared to write anything lower lest your kid be denied re-admission?

Two phone calls today from one school; it really IS time.  One to ask for the forms.  Another to remind me in the most cheery way possible – I really like the guy who has to make the calls, and feel sorry for him because of ME – that we still owe $700 from last year.  $500 for Student Council fees and $200 for a bounced tuition cheque.

Um, okay.  If the cheques are bouncing, there IS the chance that I am lying scum of the earth (being my father’s daughter, that’s what I feel like when the cheques bounce)… but then, maybe it just means what I knew all along:  that I couldn’t afford the tuition we had been assessed, and Pesach came along, or a similarly urgent grocery need, and we needed to pay for something else instead of our kids’ schooling.

But no… a cheery phone call to say “this bounced cheque is clear evidence that you are indeed hiding your secret reservoir of funds!”  Yup; try the cash drawers at Superstore.  That’s the safest place we’ve found to stash it.

Comments

  1. Is it that time already? I feel like I JUST read about tuition begging, like, yesterday.

    Sorry it's such a humiliating process. Your short form sounds like a much better idea. And I liked the pun that you didn't intend.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay, it`s late, I`m tired, but I really did look... what punÉÉÉ
    Bloody "Canadian" keyboard layout.
    that was meant to be ???

    ReplyDelete
  3. It also does the apostrophes weird in "Canuck" mode! Who knew?
    Look! I`m Canadian! `Love, me.``

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

It's Heart Month: 3 days left to save lives!

Dear Friends & Family: Hi, everybody! Sorry I can’t stop by in person... you're a bit out of my area.  :-) We’re out walking up and down on our street on this beautiful afternoon to raise money for Heart & Stroke.  This cause is important to me (I won't say it's close to my heart , because that would be tacky!).  I hope you'll join me by donating online. Growing up, I watched as every single one of my grandparents' lives were shortened by heart disease and strokes, and my father had a defibrillator that saved his life on more than one occasion.  Heart disease and stroke kill 1 in 3 Canadians and are the #1 killer of women. Please click this link to be redirected to my main page at the Heart & Stroke website: http://tinyurl.com/AtlasHeart Thus ends my personal appeal.  Official information follows.  :-))) ----- Heart disease and stroke is the #1 killer of women - taking more women's lives than all forms of cancer combined. But no one is immune. Th