It started with a great blog post—by G-dcast’s Educational Technology Director Russel Neiss—written in response to this blended-learning white paper. From there, the conversation exploded across multiple platforms, and covered a plethora of issues relating to blended learning and affordability. Jon Mitzmacher, Head of the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Florida, effectively laid out the issue: “I’m all for making day school more affordable. And I’m all for replacing teachers who are ineffective. And I’m all for utilizing the latest technology. I’m just not sure they all go together in as neat a package as we may wish.”

Teachers Are Still the Heart and Soul of Jewish Education

The most impassioned comments were in support of teachers, and the primacy of education in this discussion. Dr. Eliezer Jones at Yeshiva University’s Open Day School said that “schools exploring ways to be affordable should be supported as long as teaching and learning is the main driver and affordability is the passenger.” While some people mentioned that there may be an issue of teacher quality in some schools, Tzvi Pittinsky, of the TechRav blog and The Frish School in Paramus, New Jersey, noted that “the answer to this issue of some bad teachers is not to replace them with computers. It is to get better teachers. Blended learning when used to enhance pedagogy can be quite powerful. Blended learning used to replace teachers is a different story.” Nancy Josephs Edelman looked to expose a risky strategy: “Proposing blended learning to cut costs is merely code for cutting teachers and creating impossibly large classes.” Pittinsky spelled it out bluntly: “Bottom line, in education, is the teacher, stupid….”

Dr. Joshua Gutoff, from Gratz College, highlighted the critical role teachers play in building Jewish identity:  “[W]hile technology may—repeat, may—be useful as an aid to the transmission of information, or the development of certain formal skills, much of Jewish education, (supplementary ed. in particular, but day school as well) is concerned with the development of attitudes and dispositions. Identity development is formed through connections with both peers and adult role models, and an educational strategy that focuses on reducing the amount of human contact will invariably fail at that.”

Blended Learning: Gimmick or Game Changer?

Blended learning itself was picked over, as well. Is it the elixir parched day school parents are looking for, or is it just more snake oil, sold in a fancy bottle by some smooth-talking hedge-fund managers?

Russel Neiss said that “Far too many schools try to use technology as a gimmick to make parents BELIEVE that they’re getting more value their tuition dollars or to make some other cost savings benefit more palatable….  I think it’s little more than a marketing smokescreen to obfuscate changes to education that parents would otherwise be yelling and screaming about…. To continue pouring copious amounts of cash to subsidize something that the best research to date says doesn’t really get you the most bang for your buck isn’t the model of efficiency that we allegedly hope for re: day school affordability.”

But Rachel Abrahams, from the AVI CHAI Foundation, wondered whether the student-teacher ratio is the best metric for evaluating blended learning. “I’m curious why everyone is stuck on number of kids in the room and not on the number of students interacting with the teacher at a time. Blended groupings are smaller than most classes now. Other students are working independently—do we not believe that can happen?”

And what if blended learning is not meaningfully connected to any cost savings? Tzvi Pittinsky said that blended learning is “an interesting model that needs to be explored for its value for teaching and learning. What if blended learning was an excellent model but only in a regular sized class? Would people be embracing it in the same way they are now?”

Notwithstanding the educational benefits, Isaac Shalev, Principal of Sage70, Inc., and former CEO of Storahtelling, warned against discounting the potential cost savings. “Even stipulating that the last word on blended learning and costs savings is that it adds up to $1,000/pupil, that’s a pretty significant number—something in the neighborhood of 5-10% of tuition. Why would we turn our noses up at these savings? For a school with 500 students, that’s half a million dollars of community and philanthropic money saved!”

Blended Learning Is Part of a Broader Affordability Picture

But what was so great about these conversations was that so many of our day school leaders and educators understand the complexity of the affordability challenge.

Russell emphasized the need for multiple funding streams: “I’m totally open to experimenting, but frankly, I rather see our energies and monies go toward pushing the limits on the revenue end and pushing our community to lobby our politicians to embrace school choice initiatives at the local governmental levels and to setup community day school endowments. Those two initiatives have a significantly higher impact on the affordability of day schools than anything technology could ever accomplish.”

Tikvah Wiener, who runs the RealSchool project at Frisch, spoke to the systemic nature of affordability. She preferred to discuss blended learning in the context of sustainability, “because to me it speaks not only to a school’s financial plans but to how those plans serve the overall mission of an institution. Since I favor the inquiry-based learning approach, I’d add to a sustainability plan involvement of the teachers and students in making their school financially sound. Financial health, in other words, should be part of the school culture, just as spiritual, emotional and physical health are.”

The conversation ranged from pedagogy to government advocacy, from technology to governance. High school students, teachers, administrators, and lay leaders all spoke up. It was truly a communal conversation, and displayed the range of perspectives that make up the affordability ecosystem. Stephen Kepher, development director at Seattle Jewish Community School, summed it up well: “My favorite Director of Finance would always point out to the Board that there are three basic factors at independent schools: class size, faculty salaries and tuition. A school can have any two of the following: small classes, high faculty salaries and low tuition—but not all three. If you want small classes and high (i.e. a living wage) salaries and benefits, then you have to have a high tuition. If you want lower rates of tuition then you have to have either large class sizes or low faculty salaries. This, of course, raises questions about your core values as well as what the market may allow (e.g. is there enough interest in your program to allow for a pool of applicants that will lead to full enrollment at any class size…etc.) Somewhere in the midst of all this is the intersection of affordability and sustainability.”

While blended learning has been an important topic for the past couple of years, these recent discussions have been a great example of how the Affordability Knowledge Center can use its research and network to engage new participants, and to give lay leaders, educators, students and advocates a means to learn from and engage with each other. Hopefully subsequent research will lead to similarly enthusiastic debate.

“There must be a revolution in education in which educational science and the ingenuity of educational technology combine to modernize the grossly inefficient and clumsy procedures of conventional education.” — Sidney Pressey, 1924

As the creator of several Jewish educational apps, as a former day school administrator responsible for integrating technology in a pedagogically sound way, and as someone who has articulated a vision for Jewish education that heavily relies on the use of technology, I recently have been asked about my opinions on blended learning, and other attempts to use technology to help make Jewish education more affordable.

In short, I think it’s a bad idea.

Since this is the PEJE blog, let’s ignore the question as to whether or not technology actually helps student achievement (bottom line, it might, but there’s no real evidence yet to prove that it does), and instead focus on whether or not these allegedly new pedagogical approaches cut the cost of education.

To date, there has not been one single large scale study showing any significant cost savings of blended learning. The closest we have is a single report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that suggests given the right circumstances, blended learning can lower the cost of instruction per pupil by an average of around $1,000 annually. The real cost savings of using technology for instruction comes only with a fully virtual school model, which drives the cost down about $4,000 per pupil on average.

For those who deal with school budgets, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. The National Association of Independent Schools suggests that salaries and benefits of faculty and staff should make up something like 75% of a school’s budget, with another 5% for marketing/development, 5% for financial aid, and 10% for everything else. So for technology to make any significant impact on the affordability of a school, it means that somehow the technology needs to replace a beloved member of the faculty or staff. Compared to a fully virtual environment blended learning only lets you get rid of a couple of teachers (usually by increasing class sizes), and so the savings remain limited.

In case it’s not clear already, I just want to emphasize this point one more time. What people are really talking about when they discuss the massive cost savings associated with using technology in education is about replacing teachers with technology. And while I know I promised to focus on only the affordability question, can we stop pretending that displacing teachers is going to have a “quality neutral (or better)” effect on pedagogy?

I don’t blame those who think that technology is the answer to our affordability and quality issues in education, it’s been a common trope for over a century. In 1913 Thomas Edison predicted that books would become obsolete and that the “school system will be completely changed inside of ten years” because motion pictures could be more cost efficient as a form of direct instruction. The same promises were made with radio, television, CD-ROMS, laserdisks, the Internet, 1:1 laptop programs, and continues today unabated.

But my favorite historical example that most closely corresponds to recent attempts to address the affordability of education through technological is B.F. Skinner’s Teaching Machine. Here’s the promo for it in all its 1954 filmstrip glory:

Take five minutes to watch it, and then ask yourself why we start every educational technology discussion today as if Dewey, Skinner, Bruner, Bloom, et al. (and their critics) never existed.

We’ve been down this road before. Harnessing technology to create efficiencies and revolutionize education hasn’t had the intended impacts in the past. In part that’s because we ascribe a magical quality to it and try to force it into paradigms that it was never designed to do. Technology should be a method of enhancement, never a cost-efficient replacement for face-to-face learning experiences, or a smokescreen to distract from other cost-efficiencies.

No amount of artificial intelligence or blended learning or Smart-this or i-that is going to be able to replace the pedagogical benefits of a highly trained educator who can help students gain and apply knowledge (Judaic or otherwise) to help them make sense of the world in which they live. Trying to harness technology to supplant these professionals in search of some perceived vast savings that has yet to be realized is a fool’s errand.

My school, The Alfred and Adele Davis Academy, Atlanta’s Reform Jewish Day School, is a school that loves Jewish music. Jewish singing permeates our school, most noticeably at holiday celebrations and at our weekly Kabbalat Shabbat gatherings. When I came to Davis five years ago I began writing and composing Jewish music—it seemed like a natural thing to do given my musical background and the role of music at Davis. Our head of school and I decided it would be awesome if we could utilize my songwriting knack to shine a light on Davis’ love for Jewish music. The result is The Davis Academy’s first album of original Jewish rock: Be a Blessing.

Just as The Davis Academy decided to engage my musicianship, I quickly learned that the success of the music project was contingent on my engaging others within the Davis community. I engaged our middle school principal, Jamie Kudlats, who happens to be a professional keyboard player with a singing voice like Jackson Browne. (Imagine Paul Simon’s nephew at the mic.) I engaged our fine arts director, Kendrick Phillips, who sounds uncannily like Stevie Nicks and brings tremendous energy and enthusiasm to everything she does. I also engaged our middle school music teacher, Bob Michek, who drummed with a band in the 90’s that opened for Winger among others on the New York club scene. Be a Blessing engaged many students, first as vocalists and later as visual artists. We even engaged our front desk receptionist, Janice Durden, who is the president of her church choir and can belt out a gospel tune like no other.

Be a Blessing features 13 original songs and a 16 page color booklet. Inside the booklet are 26 pieces of original student artwork that exist independently as 2×2 canvases that were created for the album. The student artists engaged with the songs on the album as inspiration for their art work which in turn became the packaging for the album. The graphic design of the album is stunning because we engaged our visual arts teacher, Rebecca Ganz.

One of the songs on the album is called, “Kol Yisrael.” It is based on the teaching, Kol Yisrael areivin zeh l’zeh (“All Israel is responsible for one another.”) For this song we engaged our entire student body and many of our parents and grandparents to create a choir of voices more than 1,000 strong. You can see us all singing on the fabulous music video for this song:

Deep engagement builds community. It empowers people. It lets people know that they are valued and their school needs their talents, creativity, passion, and expertise. Engaging members of The Davis Academy for Be a Blessing demonstrates Davis’ commitment to remaining a diverse, vibrant, dynamic, healthy, growing school community.

In this paradigm, every Jewish Day School and every Jewish institution, is inherently sustainable.  Every Jewish day school has their own version of: musical rabbi, Jamie, Kendrick, Bob, Janice, and Rebecca. Every Jewish Day School has multiple areas of passion and expertise. Every Jewish Day School has talented and energetic students. The question is: Are we fully engaging who we already have?

Today I got schooled–by a fifth grader.

A fifth grader.

You see, I’m parked at edJEWcon in Jacksonville, Florida, and I’m feeling more than a little woozy–and not just because I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning or that it’s the end of a very intense, workshop-heavy day. My wooziness owes itself chiefly to a child named Rebecca… who spoke to me, and a sizable number of JDS professionals, of her lucid, reasonable, and ethically minded philosophy on blog commentary.

Rebecca knows things about blogging etiquette some people three and four times and five times her age don’t know.

How does she manage this?

I suspect that Rebecca’s self-assured understanding has something to do with her teacher Silvia Tolisano’s blog-comment checklist, which Rebecca handed out to us. Maybe it’s what happens with all the digital natives here at the Martin J. Gottlieb Jewish Day School (in fact, all the kids who presented today were vastly poised and capable, though none really blew my mind the way she did). In truth, I don’t exactly know.

At first, when I thought of Rebecca, I wanted to say to my fellow edJEWconversationalists: “You should hire this girl!”

Then I decided that I should stop being the social media manager of PEJE and start  teaching  fifth graders

Finally, I understood that the main thing was to learn from the experience. This preternaturally wise kid demonstrated to me that know I can–I must–do a better job teaching JDS people how to socialize.

So,  in the spirit of Rebecca’s amazing presentation, three tips (please follow them, OK):

1. Stop lurking. When you read a good blog post, when you have an authentic response to a piece on online content, take the time to respond in the comments section. As Rebecca suggested: you make bloggers feel good about their work by responding to it in public. That why we call it social media.

2. Be thoughtful. Don’t just write a comment for comment’s sake. Make your words count. Address what’s being said by the blogger. Rebecca detailed for us the multi-paragraph approach she takes in her responses–and talked about including details and being fair and even-toned when you do raise a criticism.

3. Avoid errors. Proofread your stuff to within an inch of its life. Rebecca suggested reading  her stuff aloud, which isn’t a revolutionary way to perform quality assurance, but it sounded, coming from a fifth grader, impressively serious.

In short: Take it easy, and allow yourself to be schooled by Rebecca. It’s not a bad thing, and it’ll improve your social media life.

The results of MATCH 4[1] are in and the numbers are impressive. Consider the following statistics:

• 119 Jewish day schools have received $9.7 million of gifts, including approximately $2.8 million of matching funds from the AVI CHAI and Kohelet foundations.
• The 235 schools that submitted a MATCH application came from a wide range of denominations and geographies. Cumulatively, these schools have a $1.4 billion annual operating budget and serve over 72,000 students. This suggests an average per student cost of approximately $19,000.
• Nearly 200 individual donors or family foundations have made new or dramatically increased gifts to a Jewish day school.
• With parents of a currently enrolled Jewish day school student ineligible to participate in MATCH 4, the majority of gifts have come from alumni, grandparents, board members and community members.
• Slightly less than half of the gifts came from a first time donor to a Jewish day school.
• Nearly half of all gifts to MATCH 4 were at the minimum $10,000[2] level. On the higher end, 10% of gifts were for $100,000 or more.
• Since 2005, MATCH programs have generated in excess of $58 million in donations to Jewish day schools.

To see more data on MATCH 4 click here.

With four rounds of MATCH now under our belt, it seems evident that MATCH has helped improve the financial strength of Jewish day schools by expanding the community of donors. Furthermore, day school leaders report that MATCH has empowered them to seek out new, large donors and helped them to steward those relationships to repeat gifts. MATCH has also served as a catalyst for more significant funding from existing donors. Data on previous rounds of MATCH indicate that within 18 months of their original gift, more than 75% of donors made a repeat gift which averaged about 77% of the matched gift.

AVI CHAI and Kohelet are now considering a fifth round of MATCH and would welcome your input regarding prospective donors. Do you see the greatest opportunity coming from alumni, grandparents, or board members? How about other community members? Is there a particular cohort of parents that you seek to catalyze? Your feedback will help to ensure that the match continues to burn brightly!

___

[1] MATCH 4 is a matching grants program funded by the AVI CHAI and Kohelet Foundations in partnership with the Jewish Funders Network (JFN) and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE). MATCH 4 provides a 1:2 (50 cents on the dollar) match for new or significantly increased gifts to Jewish day schools. MATCH 4 grants are capped at a maximum of $50,000 per school.

As an aspiring educational leader—I’m currently teaching for my sixth year full time—you have to learn the subtleties of the employment process very quickly. Hiring for Jewish educational leadership is complex game. Job postings go out according to seniority, and when you seek to move ranks, you keep an eye on who is changing positions and which opportunities open up as a result. I wanted to move from the classroom to administration. The question was: How?

Back in December, I reached out to PEJE’s Leadership Line. I felt alone, and needed some navigational help; PEJE seemed the logical place to look. School break was just finishing up and, when not attending to the demands of my job, I searched avidly for a new gig. Not an easy task. In fact, it felt like I was trying to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat. So, using the Leadership Line form, I threw out a virtual message in a bottle—and what followed was an experience I could not have imagined.

The expected automated response came through and, in the next 24 hours, I received an email from Shulamith Elster offering to help me with my situation. Our relationship began, as many do, by just getting to know one another. As my initial email was vague, we needed to talk more about what I was brought to the table. We spoke about my experience and my aspirations. Shulamith understood my dilemma, and explained the courtship that I would enter as I sought a headship. Our discussion encouraged me to look at opportunities two ways. First, we surveyed the scene to see which opportunities presently existed in the Jewish day school market. Second, we looked at recently completed searches to learn what contemporary schools look for in a candidate. From this, I gained insight as to how to read a job description. Even better: I gained a confidant, who helped me continue to recognize my skill and confidence to be successful in the next step.

Shulamith told me that I should seek out mentorship from other educational leaders. So I emailed a likely individual, my former supervisor, who asked about my professional aspirations and helped me develop a plan to get there. He helped me refocus to “think like a Head” for the interview process.

I also contacted a Head of School with whom I once interviewed for a principalship. We met up at the North American Jewish Day School Conference and had a great conversation. He gave me a little more hizuk and I regained the confidence to continue.

I applied for a local position of leadership. The process was a good experience; but it didn’t pan out, and that was okay. I continued to plug away looking at other opportunities. I tried for a variety of positions, knowing that eventually I’d find one that would fit me—and provide a community where my wife and son would also find their places.

After four months of actively searching, I’m proud to say that we found and accepted the next step. Come this summer, we will be moving to Chicago where I will be assuming the role of Director of She’arim K-4 at Sager Schechter of Metropolitan Chicago.

Thanks to Shulamith, and the Leadership Line, for giving me the inspiration, and information, necessary to make the move.

Allow me to shep a little nachas: She is two.

I would open up every vein in my body to give every Jewish parent the pure, unadulterated joy I felt that night. Never have I felt more proud, or more close to G-d. And never have I felt more convinced that every Jewish child should have that knowledge—and the opportunity to share it with their families.

I’m preaching to the choir. You wouldn’t be reading this unless you felt a strong connection to Judaism and the Jewish people. So maybe you get as excited as I do when I learn about how innovative thinkers are attempting to “solve” day school affordability. My most recent research into blended learning provoked just that response. My blood raced, my mind whirled, my soul burned: Is this it? Is this the answer? I felt that urgency when I learned about Kehillah Funds and middle-income strategies, too.

Each effort has yielded important lessons for schools and communities. But the most important lesson is this: We cannot stop trying.

We cannot stop looking at affordability from every angle. Revenue, expenses, marketing, recruitment, governance… The more we see these as tools to make day school more attractive and accessible to families, the more they will yield opportunities to make Jewish education a fundamental part of every child’s life.

We cannot stop innovating. Are you scared to attempt systemic change? (Don’t be ashamed if you are—change is scary, and you are dealing with children, and parents. A little caution is not unexpected.) Pilot a program in a single classroom, or with a group of parents, or with one event. Set your goals. Evaluate the effort. And grow from there. But do not stop innovating.

We cannot stop sharing our successes and our failures. You ran a program that raised thousands from new donors? Great! Tweet all about it! You tried an affordability program, and it turns out only three families took advantage? Great effort! Share the lessons you’ve learned with the field. PEJE builds Communities of Practice to make this all easier. Maybe your colleague in Memphis or San Francisco or Los Angeles has some wisdom to consider the next time you try a similar program. Don’t be afraid to promote your wins, and learn from your setbacks. We learn more from our failures than we do from our success.

No one hits 1.000. No one makes money on every deal. But as a wise man once said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. And there are too many two-year-old Jewish boys and girls who are not learning the Four Questions. Who will not have the opportunity to go to day school, or overnight camp, or to Israel. And perhaps even worse, there are too many mothers and fathers who don’t understand why that is a shandeh (or who don’t know what a shandeh is). We cannot stop trying. So let’s do it together.

Next Monday, April 8, the Affordability Knowledge Center will publish its White Paper on blended learning. If you are interested in receiving a copy, please email me.

Whenever I hear Jewish day school people babble about being “data driven,” I think of the classic scene from the film Glengarry Glen Ross,  in which Alec Baldwin, as a slickly evil dude named Blake, announces to a drab room of beat-down salesmen:

The good news is—you’re fired. The bad news is you’ve got, all you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting tonight. Starting with tonight’s sit. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. ‘Cause we’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize’s a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired. You get the picture?

Now if this is the way your JDS staff meetings are run—and I truly hope it isn’t—your school clearly is in trouble.

Fact is, data-driven day schools are fictional. They just don’t exist. Some schools might aspire to be driven by data, but aspiration is all. Yes, the phrase “data-driven day school” sounds forceful and serious, and using it might make a development department feel rugged, but the actual execution of such a strategy could be disastrous for any JDS.

Our schools should incorporate data into their decisions—as they do their values, their mission, the community’s sensibility, and their instincts—but the data should always serve (serve, not lead). Data should provide landmarks to ensure that the school is headed in the proper direction, or to help a troubled JDS realize, “Hey, we missed the exit 57 miles ago!” and turn around.

What matters is the intelligent interpretation and application of the data at one’s disposal. A school that insists on chasing after certain key performance indicators without self-reflection—self-evaluation to ensure that they’re measuring the right stuff, moving in the right direction, accomplishing their org’s mission—will sooner or later face several types of trouble.

2.

Beth Kanter suggests a smart direction for schools to take. In her recent book, Measuring the Networking Nonprofit, she says that nonprofits should think of themselves, and act as, data-informed orgs, ones that make choices through a variety of information sources.

“Data-informed cultures are not slaves to their data,” Kanter writes, and that makes all the sense in the world. But on seeing the word “slaves,” our internal conversation about data stops. It becomes an ethical issue. A Pesach issue.

Yes, Pesach.

As Jews, we are trained to react strongly to the word slavery. To avoid slavery and choose liberty.

So what, in the present context, does it mean to be a slave to one’s data? What does it mean to be a slave? How could one’s attitude toward data cause so much trouble?

3.

“A Jew is someone who shuns idols.”—Cynthia Ozick

The problem is that people make an idol out of data. When data is the one and only law—more important than an org’s mission or values or commitment to communal feeling—the school that obeys this commandment is in danger of making foolish decisions, or worse, acting in an inhumane fashion. No matter how high their enrollment numbers are.

But can data really be an idol?

Cynthia Ozick might say so. In her great essay on Harold Bloom, she writes about the function of idols—how they dangerously dehumanize us.  “The Commandment against idols is above all a Commandment against victimization, and in behalf of pity,” writes Ozick. “The deeper the devotion to the idol, the more pitiless in tossing it its meal will be the devotee.”

To be a slave to data is to work—efficiently and thoughtlessly—in the service of numbers. If you’re unsure about what this means, recall that infamous Ponzi schemer who never failed to bring in a 10-17 percent return for his clients. On a far less successful scale, the Glengarry Glen Ross team also knows from this sort of thinking.

Consider the term “data driven.” Being “driven” suggests passivity, a loss of agency. A school should not be led by numbers, but by leaders.

4.

We need to have a reasonable, humane relationship with data. It’s like technology—we must employ our rationality and self-consciousness to ensure that we don’t enslave ourselves to it. As Kanter writes in a recent blog post, “From leadership, to strategy, to decision-making, to meetings, to job descriptions—a data-informed culture has continuous improvement embedded in the way it functions.”

Data matters, but it must always put into a larger context. A human context. And for us, a Jewish context.

If you’re wondering where to begin… you just might want to fill out a JData profile and join the national JDS database—which is rapidly making the field more data informed!

Chag Pesach Sameach!

The Leadership Line was originally created to allow JDS people to ask questions and receive responses that would help them attain excellence in their own schools.  In its first year, day school leaders placed 100 calls to the Leadership Line. Since then, we’ve fielded many more calls, and we’ve gone way out of our way to solicit feedback about the LL, in order to make the service as useful and productive as possible. Today’s Leadership Line even includes a Skype option—which will beam a coach right into your office!

And now, a little secret: There comes a time in every day school leader’s life when he or she could use some LL help. And when that time comes, that leader should immediately get in touch with us.

Why? In the spirit of the Four Sons, we offer Four Reasons:

1. It’s free. There are absolutely no strings attached anywhere to this project. The LL is purely interested in using the hour to help you address your problem. Free coaching is quite a rare thing, and you should take advantage of it!
2. It’s confidential. A JDS leader has many complicated political relationships. But the LL has no personal stake in your JDS issue—and thus we always provide a good, honest, objective response to what you say (and keep the conversation between us).
3. It’s helpful. A call to the LL helps with emergent problems that get in the way of doing your day-to-day job. Our experienced coaches know the day school world so well, that they can quickly diagnose your issues and help nudge you in the right direction. It is, as one LL caller said, an “incredible resource.”
4. It’s encouraging. It’s not easy being a day school leader, and there are some problems you simply can’t take to your board, your faculty, your parents, or your students. The LL can give you the support you need.

Now, perhaps you see this and think, “I might just want to call in myself… but what kind of questions do people ask the LL?” Most typically, LL calls sound like the following:

• How can we plan a successful recruitment effort when there are excellent free public schools and our tuitions keep going up?
• Can we give our best teachers a salary differential?
• Do you know any Orthodox schools that meet in Reform synagogues?
• Do all past presidents have to be on the board?
• SOS: How can I move the officers’ focus to larger planning issues and away from “majoring in the minors”?

So how can you get in touch with the Leadership Line? Couldn’t be easier. If you’ve got a question or school related issue, send a note to LeadershipLine@peje.org, or visit, and we’ll set up a time to talk.

If you’d like to socialize your board, send them this post to show them that there’s nothing to fear in joining the big social media conversation!    

Please tell us about how you stumbled on the idea of using Yelp! to promote your school.

In my personal life, I use sites such as Yelp!, Kudzu, Amazon, etc. to research just about everything and anything that I’m interested in, especially if it’s something that costs money or involves the welfare of my family. I want to know what other people have to say about their experiences with a product, company, or service that I’m interested in. It takes a lot of time and energy to write a review, so naturally really angry people are more apt to review something and post it online for the world to see.  If I find positive reviews, then I know that the reviewer is probably very impressed with the product/service and believes in it enough to want it to succeed.  So…you can safely assume that I’m extremely impressed with the EVJDS (both as a parent and board member) and want to share my views with others in hopes of drawing more interest to our school J.

Would you talk about how you divide up social media responsibilities amongst the board?

Emily, our Head of School, and I share social media responsibilities with limited assistance from other board members.  If I find an online resource that I think would be worth looking into, I typically ask Emily and one other board member (who has an interest in technology) for feedback.  Based on my experience, in order for social media to be an effective and useful tool, those responsible for using it must have a genuine interest in it as well as a general understanding of what works vs. what doesn’t.  It’s critical that whoever is responsible for using social media on behalf of our school has a fairly strong concept of what’s interesting and relevant to potential viewers.  That person must also be able to write creative and thoughtful content. If a board member expresses interest, we work together to develop that interest into something meaningful.

How are you measuring the success of your social media activities?

Measuring the success of a social media campaign can be a bit convoluted at times, but really depends on the desired or anticipated outcome.  For example, if using an email campaign to ask recipients to visit a specific website that is provided in the email, we would first track the number of emails opened and then track the number times the link within the email was clicked.  When using sites like Facebook and Twitter, the number of Likes, Shares, and Comments are used to measure success; however, this isn’t always spot on.  If Emily announces that school enrollment is now open to all of our Facebook fans and they all Like her post, her use of social media to increase enrollment can be a huge failure if no one actually registers their children.  That being said, I think that as long as we are sharing information about our school’s programs and activities with members of the community who might not have known about it otherwise, we have achieved some level of success.

I’m interested in learning how a JDS board might use social media differently than, say, a head of school or an admissions person. Do you use, say, Facebook to gauge the success of a new initiative? Does it give you a chance to listen in on parent conversations (and consequently plan better for the community)? Do you use it to ask questions? Please tell me about how a board employs social media.

As a board member, I am focused on supporting the head of school as well as serving as a voice for parents and community.  I’m always interested in what social media sites and groups are popular among parents of school aged children and what other schools are doing.  My two children are enrolled in the day school, so I pay close attention to what appeals (or not) to me as a parent and how it could be done differently in the future. If something really inspires me or gives me a bad vibe, chances are I’m not the only parent feeling that way.  I’m also able to draw from my professional and other volunteering experiences for ideas and strategies that might be beneficial to the day school.

On a somewhat related note, I did a little test on my personal Facebook page a couple of months ago.  Typically when I post something, I might get one or two likes (if any) and an occasional comment.  If I post a picture of one of my children, there is slight increase in interest from my FB friends.  I posted a picture of my cat and got more responses than ever. More recently, I posted a picture of a chocolate cake that I made and had a great response from both friends and family; however, when I posted an invite to participate in the second annual EVJDS 5K (which is open to the public), only a few parents from the school responded.  Lesson: Cute animals and food seem to get people’s attention!