By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Relative to the news that some Jewish day schools across the country are shutting their doors, Jewish schools in Seattle appear to be surviving, and in some cases thriving.
But the past two years have not been easy. While the five primary and secondary day schools have seen steady or slightly reduced attendance, drops in fundraising and increases in requests for tuition assistance have been much larger. The Northwest Yeshiva High School, the state’s only Jewish high school, will be covered in a future issue of JTNews.
To account for these shortfalls, school administrators have had to get creative in finding grants, shifting priorities, and in some cases finding new modes of learning for the students.
Compared to a number of schools in places like Memphis, Tenn., Lakewood, N.J. and even Los Angeles that have shut down or will do so at the end of the school year, things in Seattle aren’t so bad.
The overriding theme at a January conference of four Jewish day school associations, at which representatives from several local schools were in attendance, was how to stay afloat during the economic crisis.
“We’re all dealing with the same challenges of trying to make quality Jewish educational experiences for children,” Scott Goldberg, director of the Institute for University-School Partnership at Yeshiva University, told the JTA World News Service. “That commonality drove our programming from the macro-level — needing to do more with less and really forcing us to reassess how we do things.”
While reassessment at local day schools has been ongoing — some staff has been laid off or positions have been left unfilled, for example — it has not for the most part resulted in massive infrastructure changes.
School leaders acknowledge a private education is expensive, and understand all too well the gap between the actual cost of a child’s education and his or her family’s ability to pay for it. Yet many are captive to that cost — Orthodox families, and some non-Orthodox families, will not accept anything less than a comprehensive Jewish education.
“Public school is not an option,” said Rivy Poupko Kletenik, head of school at the Seattle Hebrew Academy. “For our population there really aren’t alternatives.”
Two organizations have tried to fill that gap. The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle this past year gave nearly $450,000 of campaign and auxiliary funds to each school, with the exception of the Torah Day School. But the Federation also brought in fewer dollars last year in its campaign and is running slightly behind that this year.
“Our goal, of course, is that any family that wants to have their kid have a quality Jewish education should be able to have that, so I think we’re all struggling with that same issue,” said Richard Fruchter, the Federation’s CEO.
The Samis Foundation, a trust intended specifically to provide funding for Jewish day schools that’s unique to this state’s Jewish community, has also been able to provide much-needed relief.
“We have to thank God every day that we have a Samis Foundation that is helping us,” Kletenik said. “That is really what sets Seattle apart from other cities that are really struggling.”
“Samis has stepped up for us,” said Robert Sulkin, board president of the Jewish Day School. “If we didn’t have Samis, we couldn’t give tuition assistance to the [level] we’re giving it and not reduce programming.”
But if the recession continues, all the assistance going to the five elementary day schools may simply be prolonging some difficult decisions.
“If the recession continues,…certainly Samis does not have enough resources that we can make up the gap of increasing scholarship needs and decreasing individual donations,” said Rabbi Rob Toren, Samis’s grants administrator.
In response to the recession, Samis increased its allocation to schools by 7 percent last year and 8 percent for the upcoming year. “We’re looking at deficits despite that increase,” Toren said.
The Federation assesses the increase in need will be 20 to 30 percent.
“Though there’s some glimmer of blue sky in the economy, it takes time for that to translate to individual families, and then campaigns and philanthropy,” Fruchter said. “It’s still not a happy scenario for schools, or our social service agencies, or even the Federation itself.”
Despite the economic difficulties, all five schools believe they are doing okay, if not well.
Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle
According to Maria Erlitz, head of school at the Jewish Day School in Bellevue’s Crossroads neighborhood, things are going “very, very well.”
They have lost some students, though not all attrition has been directly related to the economy, but the incoming kindergarten is larger than this year’s 8th grade graduating class. In addition, Erlitz told JTNews, she has been receiving an inordinate number of inquiries from parents with children in public schools about applying for the middle school.
“Classes, even on Mercer Island, [are] getting to be over 30 kids,” she said. “It’s not looking as pretty as they hoped it would.”
That every 8th grade student who applied last year got into the private high school of his or her choice probably helped to spur those inquiries, Erlitz noted.
The fundraising event the school held in March raised more than $400,000, but that highlight has not come without a cost. The school made cuts over the past year and a half that reduced staffing hours and reached into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Those cuts included “taking our IT guy from full-time to part-time,” Erlitz said, as well as reducing hours of support staff to keep from doing actual layoffs.
Erlitz doesn’t expect these efficiencies to revert to former levels, at least in the short term. The school has received grant money, including from the Women’s Endowment Foundation at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and the Samis Foundation, for teacher development programs to help continue the globally based curriculum the middle school has adopted.
“We’re very excited about the changes we’re looking at in the middle school,” she said. It is “more project-based, more global-based, more getting the kids out into the world. Even my most seasoned teachers are really excited about that.”
Erlitz emphasized that none of the cuts affected programming or services that directly affect the students.
“If you’re asking me to cut the quality, you need to get another head of school,” Erlitz said she told her board. “Why be here if you can’t enrich what’s happening with the students?”
Menachem Mendel Seattle Cheder
When the Menachem Mendel Seattle Cheder moves into its newly acquired facility in Seattle’s Maple Leaf neighborhood — hopefully by mid-summer, school leaders say — they will have, in addition to the elementary school and girls’ high school, their recently opened early-childhood Montessori program in place. They’re also looking to open a licensed childcare within the facility.
According to MMSC’s head of school, Rabbi Yosef Charytan, the economy has been somewhat hard on the school, but they also felt effects of the recession on the early side.
“We always have been very budget conscious, and I think that we as a school felt the economic downturn before many of the other schools did, and we were able to respond to it in advance of everything really coming down for the overall school community…in Seattle.” Charytan told JTNews.
Currently, he said, “we’re doing great. Things, thank God, are running well.”
In the past two years, MMSC has made some budget cuts and tried to be conservative in spending while launching its capital campaign and keeping programming intact.
Cuts have included discontinuing or suspending some extracurricular programs or switching them from staff-led to volunteer efforts.
In addition, he said, “we’ve begun to explore other learning options that can help reduce our overall staff size, such as Internet-based instruction.”
Despite the cutbacks MMSC has had to make, admissions are looking steady and families are showing interest in the new facility.
“It’s something that has generated a tremendous amount of excitement and interest overall from people who are currently touring, and if they are current parents as well,” Charytan said.
Seattle Hebrew Academy
In addition to the Seattle Hebrew Academy, Seattle’s oldest day school, being hit hard by the economy came two unplanned incidents: A landslide in the urban forest behind their 100-year-old building’s grounds, and the entrance onto the campus of a man spouting anti-Semitic epithets that resulted in a $50,000 security expenditure. The school has appealed to the Jewish Federation for an emergency grant to help cover the approximately $100,000 it will cost to repair the damage and shore up the affected area.
“It is such a gift to be housed in this school,” said Kletenik, SHA’s head of school. “It is a beautiful campus…the surroundings are inspired, and it is a huge responsibility to keep it the way it is.”
Joanna Sandorffy, SHA’s board president, said figuring out how to maintain the school’s programming and grounds, particularly with the additional budget line items, has been a top priority.
“We’ve definitely had hard decisions to make, and our finance office, together with the volunteers, the finance committee, has scrutinized and painstakingly looked at items all the while,” Sandorffy said.
When SHA’s Judaics principal left the school last year, Kletenik took on those responsibilities to keep costs down.
“We decided not to fill the position, thinking that would be good for our budget — and it was,” Kletenik said.
Some teachers have stepped in to fill in any holes left by the absence of a dedicated person in the position as well, she said.
But things are looking up. Fundraising for this year appears to be on track for reaching the school’s goals, Kletenik said, and a 2-for-1 challenge grant from the Samis Foundation announced this month has garnered enthusiasm from school staff.
“To tell you the truth, we’re euphoric,” Kletenik said. “Every single teacher is going to give $10. It’s a line item of giving that we had not anticipated this spring, and we’re hoping that parents and board members are going to be equally inspired.”
A salary freeze instituted last year will be dropped; teachers will receive a 3 percent pay increase as of July 1.
Kletenik credited the school’s steady enrollment to its status as an Orthodox school. The preschool program, Sandorffy said, is at capacity as well.
Seattle Jewish Community School
The Seattle Jewish Community School in North Seattle has one big change in its immediate future: A new head of school, Shoshana Bilavsky, arrives from Boulder, Colo. this summer. The school she comes to is vastly different from the one that existed just five years ago — a new school building, a larger student body — and according to board president Yonah Karp, “we finally look like our vision of ourselves, the vision that we had for 18 years before we bought the building.”
One of the biggest bonuses of the facility, which previously housed a Christian elementary school, is the science lab that became available when SJCS made the purchase.
“We do have a brand new science curriculum that’s an extension of previous curricula, and because we have a building that’s basically a turnkey building with a science lab, we’ve been able to do things that we haven’t in the past,” Karp said.
The economy had an effect on the school over the past school year, mainly in the form of the need for increased scholarships.
“The request for tuition assistance, and the number of families that are eligible, had gone up,” Karp said. “It’s made increases in fundraising much more appreciated than ever before.”
Enrollment has stayed fairly consistent, with some attrition, and mid-year applications have been strong this year, Karp said. Though the school did not lay off any staff, pay raises and retirement contributions were taken off the table. SJCS plans to reintroduce both into its budget for next year.
“Our staff is the backbone of our school. We would not be who we are without the teachers and staff,” Karp said. “We need to honor that as well as we can in any economy.”
One reason the school has managed to stay fairly consistent with its budget has been due to strong community support, even from people not otherwise connected to the school. Samis has been crucial in helping SJCS reach its fundraising goals, however, by instituting a 2-for-1 matching grant, similar to the one offered to SHA, through the end of the school year.
Bilavsky will also be crucial to future fundraising.
“She’s got quite a track record of fundraising at her previous school,” Karp said.
Bilavsky’s impending arrival comes with high expectations, as well.
“I think she’s going to take us places that we haven’t been before, and we are every excited,” Karp said. “She has been in three different community day schools before coming to us…. I think that that richness of experience that she’s bringing to the table is certainly something that’s going to inform our growth as a school.”
Torah Day School of Seattle
When the Torah Day School first opened in 2006, the rented space near the Seward Park neighborhood from where the Orthodox school draws most of its students was ample for its 52 elementary students. Four years later, finding a building that will fit its 90 children (down from 94 earlier this year — any loss of students has come not from economic hardship but from families making aliyah) is one of TDS’ highest priorities.
“We are actively looking,” said Mike Eisenstein, co-president of the TDS board. They expect to find another space to rent — a building purchase is not recommended for such a young school.
“Not all of our parameters are well-defined in terms of demographic and ultimate size at the rate we’re growing,” Eisenstein said.
Though school leaders believe the economy has not had a dramatic impact on the school, having to account for more tuition assistance requests, meaning less income, has clearly delayed some initiatives, Eisenstein said. But being the new kid on the block has its benefits.
“When I sit around at a [heads of school] meeting and hear the discussion surrounding how to cut back and which programs need to be cut back, we’re not even there yet,” said Rabbi Sheftel Skaist, TDS’ head of school.
“There are so many things that we’re looking to add to the program,” he added. “Electives for middle school kids, and various programs that this facility can’t [handle]. We don’t have a gym. We don’t have a place for an art room. Our library is minuscule. So we’re looking to build.”
Eisenstein said many TDS students attend after-school and weekend supplemental programs as well.
“You don’t need a Bunsen burner to learn science,” he said. “I’ve been very impressed with the biology and basic chemistry my daughter comes home spouting, without having a formal science lab in school. And that’s 2nd grade.”
The board has worked with outside consultants, including Samis, to help them with strategic planning in regards to the school’s vision and financial responsibilities.
Where TDS has firmly established itself is in its Judaics curriculum. Outside of Skaist’s office is a large grid, adapted by Rabbi Jonathan Rietti, founder of a New York-based organization called Jewish Inspiration, that allows for the use of mnemonic devices to help students take numerical values of English words and apply them to the Torah. The mention of the phrase “Rolls Royce,” for example, refers students to a specific passage in all five books.
“It’s astounding. They can do that now in Genesis, and in Exodus,” Skaist said. “If the English word translates to the word 42, then they make a connection between that English word and the subject matter in chapter 42 of Genesis.”
Younger students have created journals that allow them to learn and understand all 613 mitzvot — a program completed over the course of three years. It’s all a part of the idea that connects students to their religion and their history.
“The mitzvah is not just an isolated piece of the puzzle, but the puzzle has been assembled for them,” Skaist said. “They have the complete picture — they have the sense of ‘You are here.’”
Given the size of the area’s Jewish community, are there too many day schools in Seattle?
“I would say there are too few kids,” SJCS’ Karp said. “I think there should be two to three times as many kids in the day schools.”
When the Torah Day School first opened, SHA saw a slight dip in enrollment that has since returned to previous levels, Sandorffy said. Kletenik quoted Maimonides to explain why one should not stop his neighbor from opening up a new school: “The more Jewish schools, the more Torah schools, the better.”
Given Toren’s knowledge of the history of nearly all of the area’s schools, and citing a study about “the boutique-ization of Orthodox schools” by the Avi Chai Foundation, a national organization dedicated to Jewish education, contraction or mergers would not likely serve the families that rely on the services each school provides.
“Each community wants to meet its own special needs. Can we afford that? It’s a good question,” Toren said. “Parents make those choices. They’re making those decisions with their feet.”