Rarely the ones that close. So we rebuilt operating revenue against operating expenses for 887 schools across 2,059 school-years, and reconstructed the reserves each school was holding when a shortfall hit.
Three bars below, one per group. Each bar is the share of school-years that ended in a deficit after every dollar of fundraising was counted, running rightward from a common starting line with its figure printed at the tip, so a longer bar means a school in the red more often. The two slate bars are the comparison private schools and the non-Orthodox Jewish schools. The rust bar is the Orthodox day schools. Watch how far past the other two the rust bar runs.
Comparison private schools end 37% of their years short. Non-Orthodox Jewish schools end 43% of theirs short. The rust bar reaches 65%, roughly two years in three.
An original dataset assembled by hand from public IRS Form 990 filings, historical and archived filings and financials, Internet Archive / Wayback captures, and school and public web sources, reconstructed across four years, from 2022–23 through 2025–26. Rebuilding a deficit means pairing each school's operating revenue against its operating expenses year by year, and reconstructing the reserves it held when a shortfall hit.
A peer set of comparable independent schools appears only as a secondary cross-reference where noted; the findings rest on the assembled record above.
How often does a school still come up short after every dollar of fundraising is counted?
Running short after fundraising is ordinary for a private school, since closing that gap is the reason fundraising exists.
The sharper question is what happens when a school comes up short even after every dollar of fundraising is counted. Across 887 schools and four years, comparison private schools land in a genuine deficit in 37% of school-years, and non-Orthodox Jewish schools land there in 43%. Orthodox day schools land there in 65%, roughly two years in three, which is the widest gap anywhere in this data.1
1Holds after adjusting for region, enrollment and year. Orthodox schools carry three to four times the odds of a shortfall versus similar schools elsewhere.
The comparison schools are ordinary independent, community and parochial private schools, matched to the Jewish day schools on the things that drive cost: enrollment and size, operating budget, campus and facilities, grade range, and region and local cost of living. They are everyday private day schools, not elite, high-endowment flagship prep academies.
That matching is what makes the 37% versus 43% versus 65% gap a like-for-like reading. The gap holds after adjusting for region, enrollment and year, and it compares each Jewish school against private schools of similar size in the same part of the country, rather than against fancy prep schools.
The figure below stacks three panels, all built the same way. Each panel carries the same three rows in the same order: comparison private schools at the top, non-Orthodox Jewish schools in the middle, Orthodox day schools at the bottom. Every bar starts at the same left-hand line and runs rightward with its figure printed at the tip, so a longer bar always means more of whatever the panel is counting. The rust bar is the Orthodox row in every panel and the slate bars are the other two. The first two panels are measured in percent of school-years, where a longer bar is worse. The third is measured in months of expenses held in reserve, where a longer bar is better.
Watch which end of each panel the rust bar sits at, and what happens to it in the third one.
Strong enrollment can sit on top of a balance sheet with nothing behind it.
If running short is common, when does it actually become dangerous?
Frequency alone does not threaten a school; running out of runway does. Comparison and non-Orthodox schools that hit a deficit typically hold four to seven months of expenses in reserve, enough to plan a recovery over a year or two. Orthodox schools in deficit hold about three weeks. When comparison schools need to draw on savings mid-shortfall they usually can, whereas among the Orthodox schools there is close to nothing to draw on.2
2Savings and reserve figures are self-reported in the filings and financials behind this dataset, so this comparison covers only the schools that disclosed them.
Where are the schools carrying that exposure?
The full set of Jewish day schools spreads across the country. The Orthodox subset that carries most of the risk sits in a much tighter footprint.
Each square in the grid below is one state or province, laid out in roughly its place on the map with its two-letter code inside. Every square is the same size, so the shading is the only thing carrying a number: the more schools a state holds relative to the busiest state in the current view, the more solid its fill. A square left pale grey holds no schools in that view at all. The two buttons swap the population and the colour with it, all Jewish day schools in rust and the Orthodox subset in brass, and each view is rescaled so that its own busiest state is the fully solid one.
Press the second button and watch how many squares go grey.
What does failure actually look like for each group?
That leaves two failure modes that look nothing alike. Non-Orthodox schools mostly face an enrollment problem, with fewer families choosing day school, which closes a school slowly and visibly through a board vote and a letter home. Orthodox schools mostly face a balance-sheet problem: strong enrollment, financed year to year, with nothing accumulated behind it. That second kind of trouble rarely closes a school outright, and instead leaves it permanently exposed, out of sight until a bad year lands with no cushion underneath.3
3These are schools with complete public filings and records, larger and more established than the sector overall, and likely to underrepresent yeshiva-world institutions.
So: which Jewish day schools are actually in financial trouble?
On this data, the Orthodox ones, and not by a little. They run a deficit in 65% of school-years against 37% for comparison private schools, they are always in deficit in 43% of years against 13%, and when a shortfall arrives they are holding 0.7 months of expenses against 6.4.
The honest objection comes first. Twelve to thirteen Orthodox schools carry full data for the reserve comparison, which is enough to see a gap this size and not enough to size it precisely. Reserve figures are self-reported, so the comparison covers only the schools that disclosed them. And an operating-income test cannot see borrowing or emergency communal grants, both real ways a shortfall gets absorbed.
What survives all three of those is the shape. The deficit gap holds after adjusting for region, enrollment and year, and it points at a kind of trouble that does not announce itself: enrollment strong, classrooms full, and nothing accumulated underneath.
Read these before quoting a number. The comparison is honest about a small Orthodox sample and about what operating figures cannot see.
Schools choose whether to report endowment and savings figures, so the reserve comparison covers only the schools that did.
Twelve to thirteen Orthodox schools carry full data for the reserve comparison, enough to see a gap this size but not enough to size it precisely.
Only schools with discoverable public filings and records appear here, which skews toward larger, more established institutions.
This compares operating income against operating expenses, so it cannot see borrowing or emergency communal grants, both real ways a shortfall gets absorbed.
The paper behind this story
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A data project on how Jewish life is paid for. The work comes in seasons. This page is part of Season 1: Jewish Education. It states its own sources, sample sizes and limits.
Ahead: Season 2: Household Affordability · Season 3: Federation & Charitable Giving
Working prototype. Every figure comes from the underlying research. Where a chart simplifies a published result, the page says so. Nothing here audits an individual school.