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It’s Friday afternoon at the MetroWest Jewish Day School in
Framingham, Mass. That means it’s time to learn about the weekly Torah portion, though this being two Fridays before Passover,
the focus is on the Exodus story instead.
The school’s lone Judaic studies teacher, Lizzy Siman-Tov, tells the story
of slavery and redemption, complete with pantomime accompaniment and creative props. A flashlight shining on a twig stands
in for the burning bush. A plate of sand, a splash of water, and some red food coloring illustrates the first plague—blood—to
the students’ amazement.
The performance serves not just to delight the students, but to help them comprehend the
story. Siman-Tov is speaking exclusively in Hebrew to the kindergartners and first-graders who make up the student body at
this first-year community grade school. And using Hebrew with some occasional English thrown in, the students—all six of them—are
responding to her.
"I believe day school kids will be the next leaders," says Caroline Keller, MetroWest’s head of
school. "There’s no comparison to what my six little students know now."
With the accelerated proliferation of day
schools in recent years, scenes like the one at MetroWest are increasingly common throughout North America. But underneath
the wildly successful efforts to create new days schools in Jewish communities large and small lie challenges involving curriculum,
faculty and administration, marketing—and, of course, funding. As daunting as these may be, however, many organizations and
individuals are thinking creatively about ways to solve them.
"Day schools have grown very quickly," says Rabbi Joshua
Elkin, executive director of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. "We’re in a little bit of a period of catching
up with the growth, in the sense that these institutions have become much more complicated, much more expensive to run, and
the demands on the professional staff and lay leadership are considerable."
The growth of day schools is one of the
most dramatic and extolled developments in the Jewish world in the last few years. According to a 2000 study by The AVI CHAI
Foundation, 185,000 students were enrolled in 670 day schools in the 1998-99 school year in the United States. That represents
a growth of 20,000 to 25,000 students during the 1990s, the study estimated.
Though specific numbers are not available
for the years since that study, Elkin says that PEJE has worked with sixty new schools in the past five years.
The
growth has been particularly dramatic among non-Orthodox students. The AVI CHAI Foundation study estimated a 20 percent enrollment
growth among non-Orthodox students between the academic years 1992-93 and 1998-99. At the start of the 1990s, there were only
three or four non-Orthodox day high schools in the country, while now there are about 35, says Yossi Prager, executive director
of The AVI CHAI Foundation. "It’s basically a new industry for the non-Orthodox world," he says.
And among non-Orthodox
schools, the largest growth has been in what are called community or transdenominational schools, of which MetroWest is one.
Not too long ago, the Conservative Solomon Schechter schools dominated the non-Orthodox day school scene, but today community
schools are "the driving force outside the Orthodox world," according to Prager.
MetroWest opened its doors in September
2003 with four kindergartners and two first-graders. Despite being new and small, the school offers a curriculum that integrates
general and Judaic subjects, and teaches Hebrew—as Siman-Tov’s Passover lesson illustrates—through immersion. The school also
teaches art and music, and provides one student who is Israeli with separate Hebrew-for-natives instruction.
The six-to-five
student-teacher ratio may be the envy of any school, but Headmaster Carolyn Keller expresses disappointment at the small number
of enrollees and acknowledges the difficulties in establishing a new school. "We’re creating a culture of Jewish day school
education in this community," she says. "There is a lot of work to be done."
But MetroWest is, in many ways, one of
the lucky schools. The nascent day school is able to use part of a vacated Framingham public school that closed the previous
June. Several local Jewish organizations donated furniture. And being in the Boston area gives the school access to a strong
pool of educators, lay leaders and rabbis.
Starting a new school is so fraught with challenges, it is a wonder any
schools get off the ground. For starters, finding the right teachers and administrators is difficult.
"We have a set
of educational goals and aspirations that far outrun the availability of professional educators to fulfill them," says Dr.
Harvey Shapiro, dean of the Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education at Hebrew College.
Many former and current
day school students will recognize the all-too-common scenario Shapiro describes: a Hebrew teacher hired because he or she
is a native Israeli Hebrew speaker and not because he or she is an experienced educator.
"What do they know about cultivating
a sense of second-language acquisition for their students at different age levels? What do they know about the development
of their students, and creative learning and constructivist classrooms?" Shapiro asks. "We know that the principal reason
a person hires a day school teacher to teach Hebrew tends to be—not always, but tends to be—native Hebrew fluency, which is
hardly a qualification."
The problem is not confined to language instruction. Prager offers this scenario: "A teacher
is hired and is going to teach Prophets. Too often, he or she is handed a Sefer Shmuel [Book of Samuel], and asked to cover
chapters 1–32, with not much more than a few sentences of guidance."
Nor is the problem confined to teachers. Most
Jewish day school administrators are not trained in the unique challenges of leading a day school, Prager says.
"Running
a day school is very different from being a public school principal, because day school principals report to a lay board rather
than a district superintendent and usually have significant fund-raising responsibilities," he says. "And it’s more challenging
in many ways than being in a secular private school, because day school principals must manage the competing interests of
the Jewish and general studies programs and the whole question of the role of Judaism in the school."
To address the
pressing need for day school educators and administrators, several initiatives are under way. Among them, Hebrew College established
the Center for Jewish Day School Education in 2001 to provide teacher and leadership training, recruit qualified educators
and promote and guide day school curriculum development and evaluation. Another program, DeLeT (Day School Leadership Through
Teaching)—in cooperation with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA), Brandeis University and Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion—offers fellowships that attract, train and retain new day school teachers.
Though
few opportunities exist for administrative training, there are some; for instance, The AVI CHAI Foundation funds a program
at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) to train day school administrators, and it has also paid for day school principals
to attend professional development programs at Harvard, the Lookstein Institute and Yeshiva University.
Even for those
schools able to hire highly qualified teachers and administrators, what goes on in the classroom constitutes another major
challenge. When it comes to Judaic studies, there is little in the way of standards and measurements; unlike in general studies,
there are no standardized tests in Judaic studies, nor are there widely used curricula.
"There are very few schools
these days that would not give a standardized test in English reading and writing knowledge, in history, in science knowledge,
but there are many that will not give a standardized test in Hebrew or Jewish studies," Shapiro says. "They don’t exist for
the type of curriculum they’re developing."
At least not yet.
As with professional development, numerous programs
are tackling these curricular challenges, several of them funded by The AVI CHAI Foundation. JTS, for instance, is developing
a set of benchmarks and performance assessment measures for teaching Bible. It will be implemented as a pilot program at a
number of schools this year.
"If it works, then that can be a model for doing the same for other Judaic subject areas,"
Prager says. "It’s not yet clear whether a broad group of schools will see these as interesting and appropriate for them."
In
addition, The AVI CHAI Foundation-funded NETA program at Hebrew College is developing a Hebrew language curriculum for grades
7 to 12. Guided by curriculum specialists at Hebrew University with support from the College’s Shoolman Graduate School of
Jewish Education, NETA strives to advance students’ Hebrew language proficiency by providing an intellectually rich and sequential
curriculum as well as professional development and mentorship for Hebrew language teachers. This fall, NETA will be implemented
at more than 50 schools in America, Canada and Australia, reaching approximately 10,000 students.
"We hope and expect
it will continue to spread to additional schools," Prager says.
Even if professional development opportunities continue
to grow and top-notch curricula and standards continue to proliferate, one major stumbling block can still prevent day school
education from reaching its full potential: low teacher salaries.
Day school advocates often point to working conditions
as a reason teachers should choose a career in Jewish education. But the comparison is not entirely accurate. "Usually they’re
not competing over people who are choosing an inner-city battleground over a Jewish day school," Shapiro says. "They’re competing
over people who may want to go into public education in the suburbs."
The idea that no day school pays a competitive
salary is a myth, Shapiro says. A growing number of day schools offer competitive salaries and benefits. But many do not,
he acknowledged. And raising salaries is too important to ignore.
"If we really are what we say we are, which is a
people that values education above all else, that has profound implications for the way we treat our teachers," he says. "If
the Torah really is an etz hayim, a tree of life, than we should cling to it the same way we should cling to life, which means
finding the resources, mobilizing the community."
Simply raising teachers’ salaries is easier said than done, of course.
Though some individual philanthropists and foundations have devoted funds to teacher salaries, Prager says that giving all
day school teachers in the country a $20,000 raise would require an endowment of $8 billion—not exactly a realistic goal.
Which
leaves more creative solutions. Among the ideas suggested:
n Creative pension programs, such as a national day
school teacher pension fund. "We have so many financial whizzes in this community, who create $20 million companies and then
sell them, we should be able to do this," Shapiro says.
n Strong professional development and personal growth opportunities.
"We have to make those working conditions so exciting and so Jewish, with opportunities for study and growth for the teachers
themselves," Shapiro says.
n A tiered salary system similar to those used in universities, where significant raises
are in store for professors who reach the next tier. "If we had such a system at day schools, maybe we could attract more
of the best and the brightest because of the high end of the scale," Prager says.
According to Elkin, research shows
that teachers are willing to accept 20 percent less in salary for the benefits of a strong private school environment. "That’s
the benchmark we encourage schools to match," he says. "At 80 percent of the public school salary, people are willing to forego
the additional money in the interest of being able to be in a qualitatively different environment than they would be in a
public school or another nonsectarian private school."
For his part, Shapiro called for high standards in teacher salaries.
"A
day school teacher needs to be able to earn a $50,000 salary plus benefits soon upon starting, at least in Boston dollars,"
he says. "We have many cases of day school teachers earning well over $60,000, but we need to get to that point across the
board. People who are earning $22,000 a year, there’s an expression, zeh lo yitachen, it just can’t be."
Which brings
us, inevitably, to the broader question of finances. Prager described the problem succinctly: "The fundamental crisis is that
rising costs outpace tuition and fundraising."
With tuition topping $15,000 a year at many schools, there is a limit
to how high it can go.
Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, headmaster of the Gann Academy-the New Jewish High School of Greater
Boston, says the board of directors agonizes about tuition raises. While the school’s $19,900 tuition bill may seem exorbitant
to some, it is about $5,000 less than what comparable secular private schools charge for an equally high-quality education,
he says.
On the other hand, despite granting $1 million a year in financial aid at Gann, Lehmann says, "I’m sure there
are people not sending their kids to Jewish high schools because of cost."
Decreasing the quality of the school’s
education to cut costs is not an option, he added, plus newer and smaller schools don’t have the alumni base from which most
independent schools seek donations.
That leaves day school leaders to search for creative business plans and new philanthropic
sources to sustain their schools. PEJE, for instance, helps schools understand ways to streamline budgets and pool resources.
Elkin says that one untapped resource is grandparents, citing a recent AARP study finding that 52 percent of grandparents
help with their grandchildren’s education.
And then there are foundations, which have adopted the day school cause with
unprecedented dedication in recent years. But Prager says that the small number of national foundations cannot provide all
that is needed, despite The AVI CHAI Foundation’s generosity toward day schools.
"The overwhelming majority of day
school needs and costs are local, and they’ll have to be met locally," Prager says. "And the question is whether the local
communities—the organized Jewish establishment and the local funders and activists—can together realize the potential inherent
in the day school movement."
The only way day schools will see major infusions of cash, he says, are government vouchers
(or other forms of governmental support) and major new individual donors. The former is highly controversial among Jews, Prager
says, and as for the latter, "The big dollars are not flowing, at least not yet, into Jewish education."
With budgets
tightening, scholarship programs are being squeezed. Though the neediest are still given generous tuition assistance, the
middle class often loses out. "It cannot become the educational choice of the wealthy and the poor, which is what many day
schools are. The middle income people need to be addressed in a way that is respectful and creative," Shapiro says.
Sliding
scale tuition systems based on income and vouchers from foundations for needy families are among the potential solutions to
this problem. In some places, philanthropists or foundations have offered tuition assistance programs.
Shapiro outlined
one possible solution: a voluntary tax, in which committed Jewish families would be asked to contribute 10 to 15 percent of
their incomes to their Jewish affiliations, including synagogue membership and all forms of formal and informal education.
Asking more than that would squeeze out many families, he says; less than that would leave important institutions under-funded.
"We
know the resources are out there," Shapiro says. "It’s a question of how we harness them, how we mobilize them, getting them
to work together in a way that will work for that common agenda."
One factor that would obviously boost school’s financial
wherewithal is greatly increasing enrollment. And to do that, marketing is key: the ability to articulate a vision that is
compelling to Jewish families who might otherwise never consider a day school.
"Over two thirds of the non-Orthodox
community doesn’t really know a whole lot about Jewish day schools," Elkin says. "And what they do know about them is often
really outdated."
Jewish day schools are, in effect, independent schools, and they tend to face their problems in relative
isolation. To some extent, they are competitors and sometimes act as such. But seeing how many challenges are shared throughout
the schools, a group of concerned Boston-area residents have formed a task force, called the Day School Advisory Forum, to
help schools work together.
Though someday the group hopes to tackle issues like cost-sharing among schools, its first
focus is marketing, says co-chair Mike Mufson. It commissioned a market research study, which was conducted pro-bono by a
leading research firm. The study found that there is a very large population that would be very interested in a day school
education," Mufson said. But, it also found that "schools and communities need to do a much better job of marketing to parents
according to their interests." The group will share the study's findings in one-on-one meetings with the heads of day schools
in the Boston area, and will use the study’s findings to create its own marketing campaign.
"It would have a significant
effect on schools to increase market penetration even by 1 percent," Mufson says.
The next few years will be critical
ones for the day school movement, during which communities will see whether the plethora of new schools will be sustained
and strengthened, and whether new schools will continue to be created.
All eyes are especially focused on the high
schools and their future.
Having a high school in a community helps spur enrollment in the lower grades, and vice versa.
High schools also lend a certain credibility to the day school movement as a whole, forcing people to say "that this education
is important enough to have a high school level at great cost and great effort," Elkin says.
In addition, the high
school years are critical ones for identity formation—lessons learned about values carry added weight as students define goals
for college and careers.
"The data suggest that the real ‘oomph’ in a day school education comes from continuity,"
Prager says. "Children who attend a day school for six years get a very significant Jewish education, but the threshold for
maximum impact is nine years of day school education, including the high school years."
As for the broad day school
movement, Prager says he can envision two divergent scenarios, both realistic.
On the one hand, he says, "one could
imagine in 10 or 15 years a thriving day school movement that consists of many more students, schools that are of improving
quality, Judaically inspiring, and serious in both general and Jewish studies."
The second option is considerably less
sunny: "I can imagine a kind of plateauing—lots of schools remaining pretty good or just good, enrollment flat, with day schools
remaining a choice for a relatively small percentage of non-Orthodox Jews."
Elkin, for one, believes the former scenario
will come to pass.
"The day school movement will be larger than it is now," he says. "I think it will be offering
a more excellent product. It will appeal across the denominational spectrum. And I believe the day schools as a whole will
be more in touch with best practices and the knowledge base that exists out there and the expertise that can help them to
continue to grow and be more and more effective."
The challenges, of course, will not disappear anytime soon. But there
are many people working assiduously to ensure that he is correct.
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For the two decades that Joshua Elkin served as principal of
Solomon Schechter of Greater Boston, the community dreamed of building a Schechter high school. But as the idea took shape
in the mid-1990s, Elkin said, planners "had to reluctantly but correctly and appropriately come to the conclusion that if
the school were not a community school it probably wouldn't fly."
So the idea morphed into the school today known as
the Gann Academy-The New Jewish High School of Greater Boston--a transdenominational high school that opened its doors for
the 1997-98 school year.
Many communities are reaching the same conclusion Boston did. Known alternatively as community
or transdenominational schools, these experiments in diversity and co-existence have become the largest category of non-Orthodox
day schools in the country.
"A transdenominational school, for the young family especially, becomes a point of entry
into Jewish life, when they are not yet ready to make the commitment to a particular denomination or synagogue and they want
to learn more before they make those decisions," said Dr. Harvey Shapiro, dean of the Hebrew College Shoolman Graduate School
of Jewish Education.
Though they may attract a wider spectrum of students than denominational schools, venturing into
trans-denominationalism brings its own unique challenges.
Gann Academy can easily serve as the poster child for projects
of this sort: From 48 initial students meeting in cramped space rented from Brandeis University, the school now educates 250
students on a 20-acre campus with 120,000 square feet of building space.
"It has the enrollment it has, it has the
financial support, the new campus, it has everything partly because of that decision [to make the school transdenominational].
The leadership has performed outstandingly well in a period of rapid growth," Elkin said.
But successfully launching
a trans-denominational high school has not come easily.
Gann Headmaster Rabbi Daniel Lehmann said among his chief
challenges has been attracting students at either end of the religious spectrum: right-wing Orthodox and left-wing liberal
or secularist. To do that, he has had to convince parents and students that the school supports a diversity of religious identities
without homogenizing them.
In addition, the school is attracting many students who have not previously gone to a day
school, requiring a cultural change to accommodate them and ease the transition. "The de facto culture here assumed comfort
with the kinds of things day schools kids grow up with," Lehmann said.
Organizing a community grade school proves
to be even more of a challenge. Kindergartners and first-graders are not, like high schoolers, able to choose their religious
paths. "High school students can live in the gray areas in a way little kids can't," said Carolyn Keller, head of school at
MetroWest Jewish Day School.
As a result, rules need to be more clearly articulated in the younger grades. Keller described
the great "kippah question" her school debated: Who needs to cover their heads and when. In the end, they decided that everyone,
male or female, would cover their heads for prayer and Judaic studies, and otherwise head-covering is optional.
Community
schools also face all the challenges that every other day schools faces--only the solutions are more difficult. If there are
few standards and curricula for Judaic studies education, there are even fewer geared toward transdenominational settings.
Ditto for finding qualified teachers, who in this case need to not just be excellent educators, but must also model a denominational
lifestyle while being comfortable in a pluralistic setting.
More so than their denominational cousins, transdenominational
schools must face core questions about their very purpose.
"There are really fundamental questions about what the goal
of Jewish studies is. To what degree is it about practice?" said Yossi Prager, executive director of the Avi Chai Foundation.
"It's not only what we teach and how much time we allocate, but why we are doing it in the first place."
It may be
tempting in a transdenominational setting to "backburner" issues of Jewish practice in favor of text study and other strictly
scholastic goals, said Dr. Jacob Meskin, Assistant Professor of Jewish Education at the Shoolman Graduate School of Education.
But
questions of practice inevitably arise; plus, most schools want to create a Jewish community, and including rituals like prayer
is integral to doing so. One key to success, therefore, is "admitting that transdenominational doesn't mean non-denominational,"
Meksin said .
That means, for instance, having separate prayer services for each denomination, rather than trying to
create a one-size-fits-all service. Meskin suggested it might also be desirable to have each student visit the services he
or she does not attend--to observe, not to pray--as a means of understanding each other.
The glue that binds a transdenominational
community, he said, is love of texts.
"The one thing that makes people in a transdenominational setting connect is
that they take their Jewish tradition seriously. They take it seriously differently," Meskin said. "The love of texts, the
love of the power of the ideas of the tradition would provide enough of a spark--perhaps together with social justice projects--to
give them a sense of something they were sharing, and maybe in areas of prayer they can be respectfully different."
But
for all its challenges, believers in transdenominationalism say there are long-term benefits to educating students from across
the denominational spectrum under one roof--benefits that go far beyond just the school community.
"To be able to have
a sense of klal Yisrael [Jews as a community] and a sense of ahavat yisrael [love of Israel], and a sense that we all belong
to one people I think is very important," Elkin said. "I think they have a lot to teach. They model how Jews can work together
and show mutual respect."
Or, as Meskin said, "The payoff of having Jews who could work together and really be unified
would be phenomenal."
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