Section archive - Education & Administration

Amy Katz, Executive Director of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, writes that if we believe day schools are valuable community assets that contribute to thriving, robust Jewish communities of meaning, we must be able to measure their value for the Jewish community. She suggests a few ways to measure the worth of Jewish day schools—not just for an individual student or school, but for Jewish society as a whole.

Miriam Shaviv bemoans the 'brain-drain' of many of the UK's top educational talent to Jewish schools in the US, Canada and Australia. Although, Jewish school enrollment in the UK has doubled to 26,000 in the last decades, top Jewish school educators do not enjoy professional support and pay as do their colleagues abroad. Thus many of them are lured to leave the UK to head top Jewish institutions abroad.

Harry Bloom, manager of the YU School Partnership’s division of Planning and Performance Improvement, shares some of the work he is doing to help Jewish day schools develop active strategies to increase their sustainability in the communities of Bergen County, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago and Cleveland. He relates here particularly how he is trying to figure out how to leverage community power in these five communities to increase revenue and efficiencies. This work is generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation and local Federations and Foundations in the communities.

This week saw the inauguration of the Sha’ar HaNegev High School's new 14,000 square-metre campus, just a few seconds rocket flight from Gaza, which includes two buildings provided by World ORT and its partners at the ICA Foundation and Ministry of Education with the support of British ORT, ORT Zurich and private World ORT donors in the UK and Canada: the academically oriented EMQ Science and Technology Center and a mechanics center for vocational training.