Board Leadership:
Strategic Board Governance
In collaboration with local central agencies, PEJE trains the heads of school and board members of select Jewish day schools to perform their responsibilities more effectively. The components of this regional program include two in-person seminars, in-school coaching, and skill building in the use of assessment tools.
Build Your Own Board
This full-day national seminar with follow-up coaching trains select day school leadership teams (head of school, board chair, governance chair, and development director when appropriate) how to select the right high-quality leaders to fill their boardrooms.
Board Self-Assessment Tools
PEJE has collaborated with NAIS and the Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy to ensure access to several board assessment tools. As critical components of strategic board governance, these tools will be promoted to the schools throughout the year.
Leadership Community of Practice
PEJE supports the Leadership CoP for board chairs and heads of school, see below for details on the PEJE CoPs.
Financial Sustainability:
Leadership and Fundraising Academy (LFA)
The LFA brings select day school professionals and board leaders together as teams over 18 months in a series of six strategic full-day seminars with concurrent coaching; the focus of the initiative is on the intersection of governance and financial resource development.
Legacy Giving Initiative
Through two full-day seminars and monthly consultations with Initiative staff, regional school teams (development professionals and two board members) will actively pursue the relatively untapped revenue stream of wills and bequests to endowment funds.
Developing Professional Alumni Relations
Using a cost-effective mentoring model, this initiative stimulates the development of professional outreach to day school alumni. The initiative matches experienced development professionals from independent schools with Jewish day school development professionals.
Development Conference Mentor Program
The August 2009 conference in Chicago paired participants with one of three veteran Jewish day school development professionals. These relationships are ongoing in 2009-2010, with periodic check-in calls.
Development Community of Practice
PEJE supports the Development CoP for development professionals, see below for details on PEJE CoPs.
Financial Management Community of Practice
PEJE supports the Financial Management CoP for business managers and treasurers, see below for details on PEJE CoPs.
Professional Leadership:
Strategic Alliances
PEJE staff participates actively in the AVI CHAI Leadership Work Group. We are exploring opportunities for synergy with this group as well as with the denominational network leaders to coordinate delivery of resources and services as well as to maximize the strategic impact on the field-wide challenge of professional leadership. The AVI CHAI Leadership Work Group is taking a ten-year view of what needs to be in place to support the professional leadership agenda.
Engagement with New Heads of School
Having quantified the number of heads of school who are new to their current position since August 2008 (currently 97 in our database), we are conducting visits to gather key information about serving these professionals in ways that improve their interface with their school boards, promote the career path pipeline, and strengthen key skill sets and competencies.
Leadership Community of Practice
PEJE supports the Leadership CoP for heads of school and board chairs, see below for details on the PEJE CoPs.
Field Advocacy and Advancement:
Leadership Line and Resource Referral
Heads of school, board chairs, and development professionals have access to one-hour, complimentary consultations with an experienced and expert consultant on our Leadership Line. This resource has been customized to align with PEJE's strategic direction. We are also developing an effective Resource Referral system to respond to more general inquiries from the day school field.
Community Advocacy
PEJE's Community Advocacy initiative is being launched to foster significant field commitment to the advocacy of Jewish day school education on the regional level and to stimulate game-changing regional investment in the affordability and financial sustainability of Jewish day schools. Building on meaningful relationships with on-the-ground stakeholders (federations, central agencies, foundations, and/or major donors), the initiative facilitates the establishment of regional task forces to implement awareness campaigns highlighting the benefits and value of Jewish day school education to our Jewish future. In its first year, the Community Advocacy program will target two or three communities, growing to five or six in subsequent years.
Communications
Day School Matters, the PEJE print newsletter, is disseminated biannually. This complements the monthly enewsletter, Hadashot v'Hidushim, which reaches over 7000 school and community leaders; the bimonthly PEJE Podcast is broadcast through the enewsletter. The PEJE Blog is our newest interactive venue for engaging the broader day school field, with regular contributions from each strategy team and news from across the field.
Communities of Practice
The PEJE Communities of Practice bring together groups of day school leaders with a shared goal: improving their practice. Since CoPs began in 2004, over 600 day school leaders have connected to the expertise, resources, and best practices developed by PEJE. Through regular conference calls and online discussion groups, CoPs provide a forum for practitioners to participate, reflect, share, and implement change in their schools. PEJE hosts four CoPs, in the areas of Admission, Development, Financial Management, and Leadership.
Knowledge Transfer and Dissemination
PEJE distributed its 2009 feature publication The Leader's Compass: Journeying with Vision, Wisdom and Focus in November. Targeting heads, board chairs, and development directors, this publication focuses on the three critical levers: leadership, financial sustainability and governance. It also draws the reader's attention to the variety of PEJE-sponsored knowledge resources that benefit school leaders.
PEJE is convening an upcoming teleconference conversation with major stakeholders to discuss the use of data in testing the hypothesis that tuition incentive and affordability programs increase enrollment and in turn increase financial sustainability. We are also preparing to disseminate findings from the evaluation of our CoP initiative as well as our twelve-year history of grantmaking.
PEJE Assembly for Jewish Day School Education
Field Advocacy and Advancement is leading PEJE's coordination of our hallmark event, scheduled for October 24-26, 2010 in Baltimore. Registration will open in March 2010, with theme, program, marketing, technology, and logistics planning already underway.
National Convenings
At the 2009 JFNA General Assembly, PEJE staff facilitated two day school related conversations with major stakeholders during a session dedicated to Jewish education. The conversations will respectively focus on affordability and leadership development. PEJE staff were featured speakers on the impact of day school education on the Reform movement at the URJ Biennial in Toronto. PEJE is providing significant funding for stipends to the upcoming North American Jewish Day School Leadership Conference, scheduled to be held in January 2010; PEJE staff will be presenting at a plenary in addition to leading sessions.
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