Some 700 Jewish day schools in North America with a total enrollment of 200,000 students may have their eyes on Milwaukee. Last year, in collaboration with the national Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the three Jewish day schools that are constituent agencies joined together to explore new ways of cooperating in the areas of fund development, curriculum enhancement and teacher recruitment, training and compensation.
Milwaukee, along with Boston, is now emerging as a national model for other communities who need to increase awareness of the excellence of a Jewish day school education, optimize enrollments and deepen their financial resource development.
PEJE was formed in 1997 by a group of 10 philanthropists, the Avi Chai Foundation and the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization of North American Jewish federations, to link academic excellence with advocacy for Jewish day school education and recruitment of students.
According to Rabbi Herb Tobin, PEJE’s development consultant, “The original thrust was to make seed grants to communities to establish new non-Orthodox day schools. However, soon into the program, we discovered that both the new [some 37] and existing schools were under-financed and under-capitalized. Everyone was lurching from crisis to crisis in a struggle for resources. At that point, it became apparent we had to learn to be more financially effective within the existing infrastructure.”
Now, after a year of collaboration with the federation’s community planning, fund raising and marketing departments as well as the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the federation’s education program, the three schools — Hillel Academy, Milwaukee Jewish Day School and Yeshiva Elementary School — recently launched the public phase of their awareness and advocacy effort. This media campaign is designed to show the excellence of a day school education in Milwaukee — not only in Judaic studies.
Elliot Berman, president of MJDS’ board of directors, says the campaign has “helped us put Jewish education before the community…. The ads have focused on the importance of Jewish day school education for the enhancement of the community as a whole.”
Raising funds
In the area of financial resource development, which Tobin describes as equally key to the schools’ success, he said, “We are developing ways to work one-on-one with each day school in terms of its annual campaign, as well as endowment and capital campaigns, but in a communal context. For the partnership, which is the key word, to be effective, we need total resource continuity. The rule of thumb has been that day schools are in good shape if they can pay teachers 80 percent of public school salaries. Milwaukee is only at the 60 percent pay level.”
“We are extremely grateful to the Helen Bader Foundation for their generous support of the day schools through their funding to the federation of day school scholarships,” said Richard H. Meyer, executive vice president of the federation.
“However, we know that a Jewish day school education is still not within the reach of every family that would like to enroll its children, and so we must expand our advocacy and fund-raising efforts. PEJE has not only provided an infusion of funds to support this project, but is serving as the catalyst to make this happen.”
Specifically, YES received funds to hire a person to identify planned givers; MJDS to help fund the production of materials to enhance its endowment and teacher recruitment; and Hillel to broaden its vision.
Berman feels Tobin has helped MJDS staff “fine-tune” their efforts to communicate with existing and potential donors and to “set development goals from year to year. Tobin has advised us to improve our direct donor contact, open the circle we approach and develop a relationship with our alumni. We’re attempting to package a case for why supporting our school is a good investment by the donor in terms of a good return.”
“PEJE has allowed us to gain a depth of fundraising options,” agreed Rabbi Pinchas Avruch, president of the YES board. “Fundraising is necessary for all Jewish day schools, so to develop a team approach throughout our city provides us a unique opportunity.
“Jewish education is very costly, so we must explore all options to ensure that our children continue to grow in a Jewish environment.”
Jerry Tepper, president of the Hillel Academy board, agreed with Avruch and added, “I’m encouraged that Milwaukee as a community was selected [to participate in the pilot] rather than as individual schools. I think that suggests we can do positive things together.”
PEJE consultants have also been working with the schools in the area of educational excellence. These efforts have been coordinated by Dr. Steven Baruch, CJL’s executive director.
“I think PEJE has been very advantageous for Milwaukee,” Baruch said. “While we acknowledge that all schools can improve on some aspects of their educational techniques, we recognize that each one has its own thrust.
“For example, YES has been working with a curriculum development specialist; Hillel on improving its math and science curriculum; and MJDS is reviewing its Hebrew/Judaica curriculum. And though all the schools want to increase their endowments and annual campaigns, each may incorporate different ideas to accomplish the same thing. I think that’s a benefit of PEJE — that the schools share certain needs and goals, but will meet them in different ways.”
PEJE is encouraged at this point, Tobin said, “but we’re still in the learning process. I think everyone feels we’re onto something good, that we’ve laid the groundwork and worked on successful partnerships, but we’re still experimenting with our experiment.”
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