‘Security levy’: Jewish parents face extra schools cost
Eleanor Wilson |
Families are wearing the cost of providing the extra security required at Jewish schools on top of tuition fees.
Representatives of Jewish schools from across the country told the anti-Semitism royal commission parents were paying annual security levies totalling millions of dollars.
Bialik College charged an $840 security levy in 2026 for every student of the Jewish school at Hawthorn in Melbourne’s inner east, board president Tyson Wodak revealed on Tuesday.
Those fees had increased 230 per cent since 2022 because of rising security demands, Mr Wodak said.
Some parents also volunteered to provide “extra eyes and ears” around the school at drop-off and pick-up time to help armed security guards, the inquiry heard.
Mr Wodak called for authorities to boost Jewish schools’ security funding, noting students at the two public schools next to Bialik College can play basketball on the weekends and weren’t greeted by armed guards everyday.
“I want my school to be funded to a point that it would be as safe as the school we are literally next door to,” he said.
Parents at Mount Scopus Memorial College, Victoria’s largest Jewish school, were charged a $1130 security levy per student in 2025.
Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt said the school absorbed further safety costs, with the security bill for each student estimated at $3000 in 2025.
Despite the school receiving both state and federal funding, only a third of security costs were borne by the government because most grants could not be used to hire armed guards, Mr Sztrajt said.
“The idea that government grants should not be used towards providing that level of much-needed protection has been problematic,” Mr Sztrajt said.
Linda Emms, principal of Sydney’s Emanuel School, said government grants often came with caveats that made it difficult to tailor to the school’s needs.
She feared families would soon be priced out of the Randwick school if security levies continued to rise.
“I don’t believe our parents should have to be 100 per cent responsible for paying for security which is over and above what any other school in NSW would need to have,” Ms Emms said.
The royal commission was called after 15 people were killed and dozens more injured when two gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14.
Hearings in Melbourne this week are probing security risk assessments and the relationship between law enforcement agencies and Jewish security groups.
Earlier on Tuesday, the commission heard a firebombed synagogue was unable to secure government grants to boost security in the years prior to the blaze.
Two buildings belonging to the Adass Israel Synagogue, at Ripponlea in Melbourne’s southeast, were gutted in a blaze on December 6, 2024.
Counter-terrorism police have charged three men over the attack, which Australian authorities have said was orchestrated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Synagogue board member Benjamin Klein told the commission grant application letters were sent to local, state and federal governments in 2023 and 2024 but were unsuccessful.
Mr Klein said technicalities and “a lot of red tape” complicated the application process.
The synagogue has since hired a full-time grant writer to help secure funding, he said.
Following the firebombing, the federal government announced more than $30 million in funding to help the rebuild, which Mr Klein described as a “lifesaver”.
The state government also pledged $100,000 to kickstart a donation drive to help reconstruction efforts.
The doors of the temple are expected to remain closed until 2029 while it is restored.
Chief Rabbi Levi Wolff from Sydney’s Central Synagogue told the inquiry he was subjected to messages of abuse and threats of violence “almost daily”.
AAP