The sentence “I have good news and bad news” has become both a cliché and a lead-in for many jokes; but it applies in no joking manner to Milwaukee’s Jewish student population for the 2012-13 academic year.
The Coalition for Jewish Learning, the education program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, in January released its annual census of the attendance at Milwaukee-area Jewish educational programs — the four nursery schools, five day schools, and seven supplemental religious schools.
This census displays some bad news — an overall decline in the number of Milwaukee area young Jews attending Jewish schools compared to 2011-12.
Yet it also contains good news — an uptick in the number of students at the nursery schools and a steady number attending the area’s Jewish day schools.
The total number of students attending in 2012-13 is 1,802. That constitutes a decline of 36 students or 1.96 percent from the 1,838 attending in 2011-12.
Yet even this has some good news in it. As CJL director Steven Baruch, Ph.D., pointed out in his written comments on the census, the long-term “downward trend” in local Jewish school attendance has occurred “at a slower pace” than it did last year, when the number declined by 60 students from the 1,898 of 2010-11.
The big decline occurred in the religious school programs, which include those of six synagogues plus the Milwaukee Community Cheder. According to the census, 747 students are attending such programs in 2012-13, down by 49 compared to 796 in 2011-12.
There have been changes in the landscape of area religious schools. Congregation Shir Hadash decided not to operate a religious school this year. Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue combined its school with Congregation Beth Israel’s in the creation of Congregation Beth Israel Ner Tamid.
However, wrote Baruch, “Our impression is that most of the students displaced by school closings have enrolled at other religious schools, so we are not willing to necessarily attribute the dip in religious school enrollment to the closing of the two schools.”
But the nursery schools — Jewish Beginnings, the two Gan Ami programs of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, and the Mequon Jewish Preschool — have had a boost, going from a total of 418 students in 2011-12 to 430 now.
Baruch wrote that “it is difficult to determine what factors influence this enrollment increase. There may be more pre-school aged children, or perhaps the improved economy is allowing more parents to send their children to pre-school.”
“Attendance at the day schools remained quite steady,” Baruch wrote. At these schools — The Hillel Academy, Milwaukee Jewish Day School, and Yeshiva Elementary School grade and middle schools; plus the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study (boys) and Torah Academy of Milwaukee (girls) high schools — the totals for last year and this year are nearly identical: 625 in 2012-13 and 624 in 2011-12.
This appears to comport with a national tendency. According to an article in the Jan. 11 New York Jewish Week, Marvin Schick, a consultant for the Avi Chai Foundation, conducted a national census of Jewish day schools for 2012-13.
He found that day school enrollment outside the haredi Orthodox world “has remained fairly stable, despite the continued stresses of the economy.”
This finding, Schick continued, “suggests that on the whole day schools have thus far weathered the economic crisis, notwithstanding the strains on both parents and scholarship budgets.”
Nationally, some 83,000 Jewish children are attending centrist Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and non-denominational Jewish day school in the U.S. during 2012-13, according to Schick’s study.
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