We are all seeking ways to grow and strengthen our
wonderful day schools. Many schools are actively
embracing a wide range of activities and initiatives to
ensure that day school education reaches the largest
audience and that all seats are filled. Some of the
most common strategies include:
- Hiring a professional admission director, either
part- or full-time;
- Reaching out to all early childhood settings (and
not just those under Jewish auspices);
- Conducting marketing campaigns with targeted
messages;
- Cutting attrition;
- Training current parents the sell the school as
ambassadors;
- Growing the number of visitors;
- And, of course, improving the educational program
on all fronts.
But one emerging strategy is often overlooked, and I
feel it has enormous potential to expand significantly
the potential market for day school students, as well
as for synagogue membership and other types of
Jewish involvement. That strategy focuses on
making high quality Jewish learning experiences
available to thousands of parents with very young
children (birth to four, and the younger the better).
While not exactly a silver bullet, this kind of effort
has the power to influence a generation of new
parents to re-examine their own relationship to
Judaism and the relationship that they want their
young children to have to their religious heritage.
The Florence
Melton Adult School,
with the support of AVI CHAI,
has begun to offer such quality learning experiences
to young parents. They are already offering classes
in almost ten cities. In Boston, a new program called
Ikkarim, spearheaded by
Combined Jewish
Philanthropies and Hebrew College, is being piloted at
five geographically diverse
synagogues in the greater metropolitan area. JCC
Association's An Ethical Start currently has six JCCs
where parents of preschoolers engage in a minimum
of bi-monthly Jewish text-study with Jewish
educators, with the goal of developing an adult
learning component into the Ethical Start curriculum.
There are undoubtedly others that we have not
heard about.
Even in the absence of comprehensive research, I
strongly encourage day schools to help create local
partnerships to explore how to draw more parents of
young children into exciting new Jewish learning
experiences.
Day school leaders, lay and professional, are uniquely
positioned to mobilize the larger community in support
of serious adult learning. They can convene a
planning group to bring together the JCC,
synagogues, the federation, and central agency
leadership to strategize how to launch such a
program. Day schools may be able to recommend
teachers or to provide a permanent or occasional
setting for classes to meet. If the planning group
decides to invite K-2 day school parents, then the
day school will have a direct role in recruitment.
This adult learning is not about delivering a parallel
curriculum to parents so they can connect to what
their young children are doing, but rather it is about
intellectually challenging parents of the very young to
explore the wisdom and values of Jewish texts and
teachings. Schools have a vested interest in this
process and should take an active role. Study the
existing models that are being developed and that are
already in use, including when to offer childcare as an
incentive to enroll. Find the best teachers for these
parents. A captivating teacher, coupled with a
feasible schedule (such as twice a month, October to
June), some subsidization, and convenient locales,
can create the beginnings of a huge demand for
serious learning by parents of our youngest
members. We need a minimum of 15,000 new parents
studying each year.
