Over the last month and a half The Jewish Week has run a series of news articles, opinion columns, and letters to the editor regarding the vitality of the Jewish day school field. Here are the links, in chronological order:
Prognosis for Day Schools Worrisome
The Case for Jewish Day Schools: Toward a Bright Future (written by our own Josh Elkin)
The following opinion column appeared in The Jewish Week.
A provocative question is circulating in the Jewish community: Can day schools survive, given the reality of reduced philanthropic support in this economic climate? While this is a vitally important question, it misses two salient points.
First, there is strong evidence that the day school field is not only surviving, but is a resilient, thriving enterprise. Enrollment decreases this past year were smaller than originally feared; we have seen significant enrollment growth at 50 non-Orthodox schools nationwide; and school closures, while painful, have been few.
Second is a more critical question: Can the Jewish community allow day schools not to survive? The answer is an emphatic “no.” We at PEJE (Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education) believe that day schools are essential for fostering an engaged Jewish people for an enduring, vibrant future—not just in rosy economic times, but also, perhaps especially, in these challenging economic times.
Read the rest at The Jewish Week.
The following is a guest post from Sacha Litman, Founder and CEO of Measuring Success, Inc.
David Smith* is an active Board member in his community foundation as well as the Board Chair of one of its major grantees, a local school named Springfield Academy*. Due to the continuing challenges of the economy, the foundation’s fundraising was down nearly 25% over the past 2 years. David knew that Springfield Academy, which depends on the community foundation for nearly 40% of their non-tuition income, was going to feel a heavy pinch again. For its part, the community foundation was frustrated not only by its own fundraising challenges, but also by their feeling that Springfield Academy seemed to be in a vicious cycle whereby it came to the foundation for financial support each year to close its deficits and keep its doors open, yet the enrollment at the school continued to drop and its deficits continued to grow. Some of David’s peers on the foundation board argued they should stop supporting the school altogether.
David was deeply concerned. The school had already over the past few years frozen teacher salaries, restructured contracts with vendors and utilities, and laid off some staff. He felt trapped: were continued budget cuts the right decision, or was that just going to perpetuate the vicious cycle the school was in? Or, were his fellow community foundation board members right that the school was not sustainable and perhaps closing the school was the responsible thing to do? Around this time, Springfield Academy and the Community Foundation applied for and were chosen to participate in a program with Measuring Success using our Strategic Financial Modeling and Parent Feedback processes. read more…
A lovely side benefit of working at PEJE is that I can take public transportation in to the office. With anywhere between 60 and 90 minutes a day I’m not driving, I go through two to four books each month (thankfully, my commute passes the Boston Public Library). My current read is a new biography of the great 19th century British Jew, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero.
So it’s quite the coincidence that as I’m reading about the foremost Jewish philanthropist of 150 years ago, Jacob Berkman at JTA published a list of the foremost of our own time: the Jewish philanthropists who have accepted Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s “Giving Pledge.” The pledge, for those who haven’t heard of it, is that the participants will donate half of their fortunes during their lifetimes.
As Berkman points out, some—but not all—of these philanthropists do have a history of contributing to Jewish causes (no windmill-building in Jerusalem, though). Fewer still have a history of funding Jewish education.
The PEJE Assembly for Advancing the Jewish Day School Field will have a large focus on the funding of Jewish education, within the context of increasing affordability and institutional sustainability. The Assembly will also pave the way towards widening the circle of day school supporters through the hard work of day school, federation, central agency, and foundational leaders. read more…
I had the address of the shul in Paris where I was hoping to say Kaddish for my mother. I walked up and down Rue des Tournelles, where the shul was supposed to be, but I couldn’t find it. After a few loops, I ventured out to the neighboring streets, practicing how to ask for directions in French. Still no luck. Though I really wanted to find that shul, it was getting dark, so I started to head back to the hotel. Then, up ahead, I saw a fellow Jew: black suit, black kippah. I quickened my step, caught up with him, and, still thinking in French, asked if he knew where the shul was. He wasn’t very responsive. I tried again, with slightly different words. At that point he looked at me and simply asked, “Ivrit“? Ah, that was easy. So I asked him again, in Hebrew, where I could find the shul. He immediately gave me the correct address and walked away.
We know Hebrew unlocks the mysteries of our ancient texts, but I hadn’t appreciated until then how it also unlocks the gates of trust. Given the uncomfortably high levels of anti-Semitism in Paris, he wouldn’t divulge the shul’s location until he knew I could be trusted. The fact that I knew Hebrew gave him that assurance.
Never before had I thought of language as engendering trust, but this encounter made the connection seem obvious. Sharing a language means sharing a piece of your identity; it means establishing an instant state of belonging, especially when you’re traveling in a foreign country. My shared knowledge of Hebrew with that French Orthodox Jew, whom I will likely never see again, promoted trust.
Sometimes I feel like I’m a doctor. A doctor goes to a family barbeque and all of a sudden, everyone needs him/her to check their child’s ears, look down a throat, and diagnose all sorts of medical issues on the spot.
Working at PEJE can cause that sort of occupational hazard. 10 minutes. That’s the maximum time I can be in a social setting before the talk turns to day schools. Last Sunday I was at a barbeque with friends who were visiting from the Midwest. They are devoted members of their Jewish community and committed to the Jewish day school their three children attend. Of course, the conversation turns to day schools. Even though I have dozens of social conversations about day schools every week, this was a unique experience.
My visiting friend told her nine-year-old daughter Orly that I work at a place that cares about all the Jewish day schools in North America. Orly thought this was interesting, and when I asked her what was one thing I should know about her school she didn’t hesitate:
“The one thing you should know about my school is that the Hebrew teachers are the best!”
I stopped in my tracks. What an incredible thing for a nine-year-old to say. And my wheels started spinning. What do I know about this school from that one piece of information? How could I use that one line to connect to donors, board members and parents? When building a meaningful case about a school, sometimes we are stuck in the numbers and facts. Here is how I would use that one small piece of information to make a meaningful case for this school: read more…
Leslie Crutchfield, coauthor of Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits (recognized by The Economist on its Best Books of the Year list), is a leading authority on scaling social innovation and high-impact philanthropy. She is also the Assembly’s keynote speaker on Monday, October 25.
PEJE: On page 19 of Forces for Good you write that “greatness has more to do with how nonprofits work outside the boundaries of their organization than how they manage their own internal operations.” That seems like a fairly obvious point, so what is it about non-profit culture that would require it to still be made?
Leslie: I think there is awareness of the need to work beyond the boundaries, but the reality of the day-to-day for most nonprofits is that they have to focus most, if not all, of their time on what’s going on within the four walls. Every nonprofit—whether it’s a social service provider or a school or an environmental advocacy organization—has to keep the lights on; recruiting, retaining, and developing staff is a huge part of it because most nonprofits are in the service business.
Especially in economic times like we’re in right now (obviously it’s happening in all sectors) every nonprofit is feeling the brunt. Right now there’s just less money being given out, and fewer people have the fungible dollars to pay tuition or make grants. In that kind of environment, nonprofits become even more internally focused because they have to figure out where to adjust or cut back. Even in good economic times when some groups can focus more on growing, nonprofits feel that if they want to have more impact, if they want to do more good in the world, the first answer to that is “let’s expand, let’s add programs, let’s go to a new site.”
That is a way to have more impact, but it’s not the only way, which is the main A-ha! from Forces for Good: The groups that we studied did try to grow. But the answer to having more impact and to doing more good in the world wasn’t just to grow their programs, but it was to advance the entire field. They’re driven by larger causes, and that seems to be what distinguishes these very high-impact nonprofits from average nonprofits. read more…
That is the theme of latest issue of The Lookstein Center’s Jewish Educational Leadership, focusing, as you may have guessed, on day schools and affordability. About half of the articles online require subscription, but I highly suggest you read whichever ones you can.
And you should begin with “Making the Connection between Board Leadership and Fundraising,” written by some of my colleagues (including fellow blogger Jennifer Weinstock). This article, based on the experiences of our Leadership and Fundraising Academy, explores what happens when a school’s leadership recognizes the connection between strategic board governance and the ability to raise funds. (Hint: nothing but good.)
Watch for thoughts on some of the public-access articles in the coming weeks.
–Matt Brown
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