CESJDS is one of five Jewish day schools to participate in a three-year pilot program aimed at increasing enrollment, thus helping to strengthen young Jewish Americans’ connection to their religion. The program is funded by The Ronald S. Lauder Initiative (LII), which started off as a foundation to rebuild Jewish life in areas of Europe affected by the Holocaust.
According to eJewishPhilanthropy, out of 1.6 million Jewish children in the country, only 300,000 attend Jewish day schools. Of those, 88% attend Orthodox day schools.
Ronald Lauder began his initiative to make an impact on Jewish education with Jewish day schools, camps and community centers in Western Europe, however, he recently decided to extend his impact to the United States to make an impact on Jewish education.
“I am really excited about this specific project because I think it tells us so much about day schools in general and about the Jewish community generally,” LII Transformation Manager Erin Dreyfuss said. “It will tell us about how parents are making decisions, not just about their kids’ Jewish education, but ultimately, about the community that they’re a part of.”
Dreyfuss works with staff at both JDS and Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School to coordinate future plans for the schools. She has had multiple careers in Jewish education including working at Maccabi USA, the JCC in D.C. and Olam Tikvah in Fairfax, Virginia.
In addition to the DC area, schools from three other cities with large concentrations of Jews are involved in the project: Boca Raton, Boston and Detroit. The first step of this project was research done by LII staff on what steps needed to be taken to increase enrollment at Jewish day schools, Dreyfuss said.
“They [LII staff] identified that there are two main reasons why people are not going to Jewish day schools,” Head of School Rabbi Mitchel Malkus said. “One is that Jewish day schools are expensive, and the second is what they call ’value proposition,’ meaning that there aren’t enough people who value strong Jewish education.”
According to Malkus, after realizing this, the organization decided they could work to solve the value proposition problem, by showing Jewish families why they should send their children to Jewish Day Schools. LII staff plan to do so by brainstorming and researching methods for more families to learn about JDS.
“One of our goals is to get the word out much more broadly about our school, to tell our school story more,” Malkus said.
Assistant Head of School Julie Horowitz will oversee the admissions and marketing of the project at JDS. She will help figure out why families choose JDS for their kids, and plan what JDS can do to expand marketing and recruiting efforts to attract more students.
When it comes to this project, Horowitz is most excited to think creatively about initiatives that will improve the community. Horowitz said that there is a lot of room for experimentation and learning.
“I like things that are new and emerging; there’s something fun about not knowing exactly how this is going to play out,” Horowitz said. “That feels really exciting, it’s the beginning of the journey.”
