The biggest change in the Milwaukee Jewish School Census for the 2008-09 school year is that the Milwaukee Jewish Day School’s enrollment declined by about 40 students.
But that was almost the number of the exceptionally large eighth grade class — 44 students — that graduated at the end of the 2008 school year, and an exceptionally small such class — ten students — that entered this year, said Judy Miller, MJDS head of school.
“We knew enrollment was going to go down a lot” in the 2008-09 year, Miller told The Chronicle in a telephone interview. This was partly because of the large eighth grade class, and partly because of the normal changes that happen, with some families moving out of town, and some moving to Israel, she said.
Nevertheless, the school has “a lot of applications” for this coming fall, she said. Even in the face of the present recession, people still regard giving their children a Jewish education “a high priority,” Miller said.
That seems to be the case throughout the community. Apart from that one blip at MJDS, there are “no drastic changes” in the overall attendance at area Jewish schools — day, supplementary and nursery — according to Steven Baruch, Ph.D., executive director of the Coalition for Jewish Learning.
CJL is the education program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. It has compiled the annual census since 1980, when the organization was known as the Milwaukee Association for Jewish Education. (The name changed around 1997.)
The current report includes a bar graph going back to the 1993-94 school year. It shows a slow decline in the overall number of children attending Milwaukee-area Jewish schools from 2,513 in 1993-94 to 2,079 in 2008-08.
However, for the last three years, the total has changed little — 2,065 in 06-07, 2,093 in 07-08, and 2,079 in 08-09.
The data were collected and compiled by Alice Jacobson, director of CJL’s Creativity Center. She told The Chronicle in a telephone interview that she sends a form to all area Jewish schools, asking for the numbers of students in each class as of Oct. 1, 2008.
The total populations at the different types of schools are as follows:
• Nursery schools: 470 students this year, compared to 455 last year, at Jewish Beginnings, JCC Gan Ami (at Karl Campus and in Mequon) and the Mequon Jewish Preschool.
• Day schools: 692 students this year, compared to 725 last year, at The Academy (Hillel), Milwaukee Jewish Day School, Torah Academy of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study and Yeshiva Elementary School.
• Religious schools: 917 students this year compared to 913 last year, at Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue, Cong. Beth Israel, Cong. Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun, Cong. Emanu-El of Waukesha, Temple Menorah, the Milwaukee Community Cheder, the Pelz Hebrew School/Cong. Agudas Achim Chabad, Cong. Shalom, Cong. Shir Hadash, Cong. Sinai.
The report also analyzed the number of students attending schools of various ideological orientations. It showed:
• 397 students (19 percent) attending Orthodox schools, day and supplementary.
• 141 students (7 percent) in Conservative supplementary schools.
• 34 (1 percent) in the one Reconstructionist supplementary school (Cong. Shir Hadash).
• 641 (31 percent) in Reform supplementary schools.
• 866 (42 percent) in “communal” day and supplementary schools.
People who want to examine the full report may do so at the schools or at CJL, according to Jacobson.
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