By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
Jewish parents in Seattle want quality Jewish early childhood education and a sense of belonging to the greater Jewish community, according to a new local community report. Schools, however, will need to recruit and retain quality Jewish preschool teachers as well as develop some Nordstrom-like customer service skills aimed at new parents.
The Early Childhood Initiative of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle was a long effort by a committee of Jewish communal leaders who used focus groups and surveys to find out what parents, educators, and organizations can do better when it comes to welcoming young Jewish parents in Seattle into the Jewish fold and familiarizing them with local Jewish schools and parenting resources programs.
“It was a long, 18-month process,” said Barbara Binder Kadden, director of the Jewish Education Council at the Jewish Federation. “We not only looked at the schools, but we looked at the community as a whole to see what are some of the unmet and unfulfilled needs in the community.”
Before settling on a wide-ranging set of objectives, the task force looked at Jewish early childhood programs around the country to see what made their communities thrive and succeed.
“Even in communities larger than ours, there hasn’t been a coordinated approach to early childhood education and outreach,” said David Ellenhorn, a co-chair of the ECI. “We’re hoping that we can have a more active, vibrant, and more numerous Jewish community by reaching out to young families. In that sense, we’re cutting some new ground here.”
The committee found that 75 percent of Jewish educators in the Seattle area are Jewish, but whether Jewish or not, they said they wanted better Jewish curricula.
Ellenhorn said he guided the committee on programs it would ultimately recommend.
“We need more resources, like an early childhood resource center, so that we could leverage our expertise in the community and put out better quality Judaic curriculum for our schools,” he said.
According to research by Dr. Mark Rosen, a senior research associate at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., Seattle already has some of the best early childhood programs in the country.
In 2006, Rosen observed that out of approximately 60,000 Jewish births that occur annually in the United States, relatively few receive a formal welcome into the Jewish community. He believes that if supportive representatives from the educational community contacted new Jewish parents during the first three to five years of their children’s lives, it would greatly impact the parents’ educational choices and the Jewish identity of the child.
“Parents need a lot of support and when they find it and create a community, it’s transformative for these parents,” said Dana Weiner, assistant director for family programs at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island. In addition to a thriving community-wide, nondenominational preschool, the SJCC operates two popular programs for Jewish parents out of their facility: Shalom Baby and Listening Mothers.
“If we can be the entry point for parents, then they will go to the preschool, and then they’ll branch out to [Congregation Herzl-Ner Tamid], or the Jewish Day School, or other Jewish programs,” Weiner said. “And we could do a lot more if we had additional funding.”
The SJCC’s Shalom Baby program matches a local Jewish parent with a Jewish family that has brought a new baby home. The parent personally delivers a gift baby basket to the new parents’ house.
Listening Mothers is an eight-week course designed for mothers and their newborns up to six months old, where they can make friends and learn about bonding with their baby from experts in the field of emotional development and attachment.
“We’re probably tracking an 85 percent success rate from people who receive baskets going on and signing up for another program,” Weiner said. “With Shalom Baby, we found it was beneficial to connect with OB/GYNs and pediatricians in the community. Word-of-mouth is a good way, too.”
Margie Holzer, director of the Early Childhood Education Center at the Seattle Hebrew Academy, an Orthodox-based school with most students coming from the Orthodox synagogues, said they intend to increase outreach to their community, along with teacher training.
“Our goals are the professionalism of our teachers, and reaching out to Jews in the greater Seattle area, both those who belong to synagogues and the unaffiliated,” Holzer said. “Last year, we had 54 students. I would say we are pretty stable.”
Cindy Benedek, the preschool director at the Jewish Day School Preschool, said they have already implemented many of the committee’s program directives. Since their school is licensed by the state, their teachers have to be licensed and attend continuing education programs through the year.
“The majority of the option items we are already doing,” Benedek said. “It reinforces to us that we were doing the right things.”
The JDS preschool is a community school that welcomes all denominations of Jewish families. They have a maximum class size of 17 children per class and 34 allotted spots for their pre-kindergarten class. The class is currently at 96 percent capacity.
“I feel very good about the program,” Benedek added. “Our goal is also to increase and enhance what is happening Judaically in their homes.”
The next phase of the initiative will be to identify funding sources for these programs and then get them implemented within the community. This will require multi-agency participation, as well as the creative pursuit of non-traditional funding.
The ultimate goal, Ellenhorn said, is simple.
“The Early Childhood Initiative, and what it’s trying to do, can help us find a place for people, regardless of their path or what their connection to the community has been.”