Seattle Jewish Community School: Bringing in the whole family

By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent

Editor’s Note: As the year draws to an end, parents are beginning to think about how they will educate their kids in the fall. Private school application deadlines are looming, so The Jewish Sound has met with each of the primary Jewish day schools in the Seattle area to learn about what they offer, including class size and tuition rates, and how they differentiate themselves. Note that the base tuition, that is the amount families would pay for a single student after the school receives tuition assistance from the Samis Foundation and the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. We will cover the high schools in early January.

 It was a subtle, perhaps imperceptible shift many parents might not detect, but last year, Rachel Scherr noticed her then-4th grader Jordan’s loss of excitement and a waning connection toward his classwork at a North Seattle public elementary school.

That’s when she and her husband took action and switched their sons, Jordan, 10, and Aaron, 7, into the Seattle Jewish Community School.

The 92-student, dual-curriculum kindergarten-through-5th-grade day school splits the school day into two parts: A half day of general studies, including language arts, reading, math, science and social studies, and a half day of Judaic studies that includes Hebrew, Torah study, prayer and religious ritual knowledge, Jewish history, and life cycle and Jewish values.

“At SJCS, we approach exceptional education through the lens of the Jewish experience,” says Shoshi Bilavsky, SJCS’s head of school since 2010. “We graduate learners who are consistently at the top of their academic level, but who can also find joy in shared traditions, form lifelong relationships and enrich their communities.”

“It was a big deal,” said Scherr about the switch. “They were both doing fine in the sense that they were happy, but although he [Jordan] was socially comfortable, we were feeling like his academic needs were not being met.”

In public school, Scherr noticed that Jordan wasn’t getting the kind of extra support he needed with his writing skills, even though the school made an effort to provide it. The teacher, she said, just didn’t seem equipped to take it on.

Her boys had to adjust to a daily and more intensive focus on Hebrew in the classroom, which was a whole different experience, according to Scherr.

“We were a little concerned about our 5th grader starting in with other 5th graders who already had five years of Hebrew,” said Scherr, who hired a summer Hebrew tutor for Jordan to make the transition easier.

“He’s fine,” she said. “There’s a wide range of Hebrew abilities in the 5th grade so it’s not hard to fit in. We were just eager to have our kids surrounded by that particular community, which has to do with it being the Jewish community.”

Scherr also noticed that many of her friends from the North Seattle campus of the Stroum Jewish Community Center preschool, located at Temple Beth Am, where her children attended, chose to send their kids to SJCS.

“Families choose SJCS because they value our approach to ‘whole child’ learning,” said Jessica Graybill, director of admissions and marketing at SJCS. “Excellent academics are central to what we do, but to focus on a child’s academic successes or struggles is to miss the whole of their being — their social, emotional, behavioral and cultural development is as important as their ability to succeed in the classroom.”

The average class size at SJCS is 16 and the student-to-teacher ratio is one to five.

In addition to learning specialists who can give students individual attention, and two teachers in each classroom, a typical week at the SJCS also exposes students to an array of highly accomplished specialists in art, music, creative dance and movement, library skills, and physical education.

Elizabeth Davis and Rob Jacobs are the parents of three children who went through SJCS — two graduated and their youngest, Sammy, 7, attended SJCS for kindergarten and 1st grade.

“SJCS doesn’t just teach to the test even though the children must meet these milestones,” said Davis. “Instead it’s really focused on fostering learning both from a textbook and experiential standpoint. For example, last year Sammy’s class was learning about wheat. They studied breads from around the world and used it as a way to understand how wheat grows, is cultivated.”

Parents are an essential part of the school’s operations and may serve in the parent association, on the board of trustees, and various board committees. Davis served on the SJCS board for two, two-year terms.

“They do a fair amount of board development and reach out to community resources to help build board competency,” said Davis. “The board works hard to balance many competing needs — making tuition affordable, raising funds, ensuring academic excellence, and bringing in the best teachers.”

The tuition assistance committee considers a family’s Jewish expenses, such as summer camp and synagogue membership as pre-need expenses. SJCS helps families get connected to each other through its community outreach program, Jewish Junction, which holds events at the school or at outside venues.

SJCS parents can also take advantage of its before and after-school enrichment program, where kids sign up for classes like cooking, gymnastics, kung fu, games, or a homework club while waiting to be picked up.

 

Learn more at www.sjcs.net.