Delaware Tarbiyah School
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Please help urgently! The incomparable Tarbiyah Islamic School of Delaware is in a financial crisis. Due to significant cuts from the state level, the school needs to raise $112,000 to complete the end of the year. Please contribute whatever you can and share this page to all your family and friends! Tarbiyah provides such tremendous education set in Islamic principles. This school is such a blessing and we must do what we can to help! Please see the many accomplishments of our students and the urgency of need for contributions in the letter from Dr. Amna Latif, our brilliant principal.
Tarbiyah School was established 9 years ago with the aim to operate without having to raise funds for its operational costs. AlhamduLillah we were able to do this until last August. The primary source of funding relied heavily on the child care services we provided young children. That sourcing allowed us to offset the operating loss we incur in the middle school due to the huge difference in tuition revenue and the expenses. To provide quality education, we hired and trained talented faculty members. That resulted in the school making a mark at the national, regional and state level through our student’s participation in external academic competitions. For example, our students earned 4 state level honors in science, were placed third in regional and state level math league. Our students have received distinctions in Geography Bee, Spelling Bee, National Quran competitions and our graduates were placed in quality charter high schools in the past years.
Earthier this month, 25 of our middle school students participated in a national science competition at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. Six of them were placed top-10 among all competitors in three different categories, and the remaining students were placed among top-20 in 11 other categories.
All of these accomplishments come at a cost and as of August 2018, we were able to make our financial obligations, i.e., payroll, taxes, and utilities, using the funds the school generated in terms of tuition and various federal and state grants. Our average monthly expense runs between $92,000 to $100,000 and annual budge exceeds a million dollars.
In September 2018, the state funding for low income families changed significantly for child care services in Delaware. This change has impacted school’s funding from approximately $60,000 a month to $32,000 a month on average. The loss of $28,000 per month revenue in additional to a significant expense to bring the child care facility up to code has strained school budget significantly. The new regulations have reduced our capacity for the number of students we can care for in the school. As a result, we had to let go several children from the child care facility to meet the student to room ratio. The reduction in the number students meant a major reduction in revenue. Even though we have a waiting list for our child care services including before and aftercare, we cannot provide care for those children. Currently, the revenue from the child care facility can barely meet its own expenses and the deficit in higher grades is not sustainable at this point. We are working with the Delaware Office of Childcare Licensing to increase the capacity, but the process is very slow and bureaucratic in nature. This may take more than a year for us to bring the capacity up to a level where we can sustain deficit from the higher grades.
As it stands, the school shall not be able to meet its financial obligations for the month of March 2019 and beyond. We are not the only non-public school affected by this. Other non-public schools are making difficult decisions of either shutting down or running major fundraising campaigns to meet their financial needs for the remaining 4 months of the current school year.
We need at least $112,000 to keep our doors open through the end of 2018-2019 school year which ends in June 2019.
Tarbiyah School was established 9 years ago with the aim to operate without having to raise funds for its operational costs. AlhamduLillah we were able to do this until last August. The primary source of funding relied heavily on the child care services we provided young children. That sourcing allowed us to offset the operating loss we incur in the middle school due to the huge difference in tuition revenue and the expenses. To provide quality education, we hired and trained talented faculty members. That resulted in the school making a mark at the national, regional and state level through our student’s participation in external academic competitions. For example, our students earned 4 state level honors in science, were placed third in regional and state level math league. Our students have received distinctions in Geography Bee, Spelling Bee, National Quran competitions and our graduates were placed in quality charter high schools in the past years.
Earthier this month, 25 of our middle school students participated in a national science competition at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. Six of them were placed top-10 among all competitors in three different categories, and the remaining students were placed among top-20 in 11 other categories.
All of these accomplishments come at a cost and as of August 2018, we were able to make our financial obligations, i.e., payroll, taxes, and utilities, using the funds the school generated in terms of tuition and various federal and state grants. Our average monthly expense runs between $92,000 to $100,000 and annual budge exceeds a million dollars.
In September 2018, the state funding for low income families changed significantly for child care services in Delaware. This change has impacted school’s funding from approximately $60,000 a month to $32,000 a month on average. The loss of $28,000 per month revenue in additional to a significant expense to bring the child care facility up to code has strained school budget significantly. The new regulations have reduced our capacity for the number of students we can care for in the school. As a result, we had to let go several children from the child care facility to meet the student to room ratio. The reduction in the number students meant a major reduction in revenue. Even though we have a waiting list for our child care services including before and aftercare, we cannot provide care for those children. Currently, the revenue from the child care facility can barely meet its own expenses and the deficit in higher grades is not sustainable at this point. We are working with the Delaware Office of Childcare Licensing to increase the capacity, but the process is very slow and bureaucratic in nature. This may take more than a year for us to bring the capacity up to a level where we can sustain deficit from the higher grades.
As it stands, the school shall not be able to meet its financial obligations for the month of March 2019 and beyond. We are not the only non-public school affected by this. Other non-public schools are making difficult decisions of either shutting down or running major fundraising campaigns to meet their financial needs for the remaining 4 months of the current school year.
We need at least $112,000 to keep our doors open through the end of 2018-2019 school year which ends in June 2019.
Organizer
Maryum Rafique
Organizer
Newark, DE