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The Challenge of Keeping Kids in Day Schools

Claudine and Ira Unterman pulled one of their four children out of Orthodox day school a couple of years ago, when they concluded the school could not provide the special resources their daughter needed. But when they pulled a second child out, and then a third, it was because they had come to believe that the education at the local public school was better than what their children were getting at day school, enough so that they were willing to sacrifice the benefits of an intensive Jewish day school education and atmosphere.
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November 5, 2009

Claudine and Ira Unterman pulled one of their four children out of Orthodox day school a couple of years ago, when they concluded the school could not provide the special resources their daughter needed. But when they pulled a second child out, and then a third, it was because they had come to believe that the education at the local public school was better than what their children were getting at day school, enough so that they were willing to sacrifice the benefits of an intensive Jewish day school education and atmosphere.

“I am a product of yeshiva, from preschool through college,” Claudine Sokol Unterman said. “I never fathomed I would send my children to public school.”

A growing number of Los Angeles’ Orthodox or traditional families — families who were once statistical shoo-ins as day school material — are, for a variety of reasons, moving to public schools, especially in the elementary grades.

Day schools don’t yet have a final tally this year of how many students have left, and public schools do not keep track of students’ religion. But anecdotal evidence and informal canvassing suggests that dozens of kids from Orthodox families are leaving Jewish day schools for public schools, doubling or tripling the numbers of just a few years ago. Canfield Elementary, in the heavily Orthodox Pico-Robertson neighborhood, has more than 40 observant kids, according to parents who have children in the school — a huge jump from last year. Beverly Hills public schools are also seeing an increase.

Many families have left because day schools’ $10,000 to $20,000 annual tuition — even when substantial scholarships are offered — is simply impossible. Last year’s economic meltdown set in just after the start of the school year, and despite several ambitious scholarship programs, many parents couldn’t make it work when it came time to reregister for this school year.

But some have left even when they could still pay the tuition. Families turned to public schools because day schools were not providing the resources their children needed — programs either for the gifted or those with learning disabilities or more pronounced special needs. And some, like the Untermans, simply felt their kids would get a better secular education, for free, at public school.

While there have always been traditional families in public schools, the bar for pulling out of day schools seems to have recently moved, undoing a decades-old taboo.

“I think people at first were very shocked that I would make that decision,” Unterman said. “But now, people call me all the time to ask me how I like Canfield and how I made the adjustment.”

While the Jewish educational establishment is paying attention, they aren’t yet ready to call it a trend or sound the alarms too loudly.

“You’re not talking about a huge number,” said Miriam Prum Hess, director of day school operational services for the Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE), noting that the trend so far seems limited to West Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, which have high-quality public schools. “It’s more than we’ve seen in recent years, but I don’t think it’s so pervasive. I don’t think it’s a sweeping trend.”

There are close to 10,000 students in 36 day schools in the Los Angeles area.

Children who go to day school — both Orthodox and other denominations — have the highest rates of staying affiliated during college, marrying a Jew and staying committed to Judaism throughout life, according to Jewish population surveys.

BJE lay and professional leaders have met to discuss the issue and are now collecting information to determine if and why people are leaving, and whether resources are available to meet their Jewish educational needs, according to Gil Graff, executive director of the BJE.

The trend has not been documented nationally, according to Joshua Elkin, executive director of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE), whose mission it is to increase the number of students getting a quality day school education.

He says that while day schools have lost some students to the recession, he sees parents still valuing Jewish education, and schools working hard to deliver a compelling product.

In a recent national study conducted by PEJE, 89 percent of day school parents said they would recommend their school to other families.

“In this kind of environment, working on a tighter budget, you need to be putting out a program that is high quality, and you need to have a program that meets the needs of your students,” he said, noting that schools around the country are working harder to include students with special needs.

Prum Hess acknowledges that L.A. day schools are still behind the curve in serving students with special needs, ranging from mild learning challenges to severe disabilities. Other students simply can’t handle the long day or the dual curriculum.

But for students who are a good match for day schools, Prum Hess says parents recognize that students benefit from the intellectual rigor and analytical thinking required to learn Hebrew and Jewish texts along with math, science and English.

She says that while elementary grades in public schools may be ahead of dual-curriculum schools in specific areas, achievement eventually evens out and studies show day school students do just as well as or better than other students in college.

An infusion of cash into L.A. day schools has begun to address the financial squeeze. Most schools have increased fundraising to provide more assistance, and the Jewish Community Foundation provided $150,000 in matching funds through its Jewish Family Relief Network. Last March the San Francisco-based Jim Joseph Foundation gave Los Angeles $2.5 million for emergency tuition assistance over the next two years, on top of last December’s $12.7 million grant over the next six years for middle-income tuition assistance at five Los Angeles Jewish high schools.

High schools receiving grant money are required to raise a combined $17 million for the BJE’s newly established Simha and Sara Lainer Day School Endowment Fund, already seeded with $4.25 million. BJE’s goal is to raise $100 million for the endowment fund, which would be used to provide matching funds for schools that develop their own endowments.

But that endowment is a long way off, and even that may not be enough to bring back students who are thriving in public schools. Still, those parents acknowledge that the students are missing something vital.

“When it came to the Jewish holidays this year, my kids weren’t as into it as they were when they were in day schools. This is the price you pay for taking your kids out,” said Hal Schoenberg, who has tried five different day schools and now is pleased with how Canfield has embraced his two boys. Schoenberg has organized a group of about 30 kids to gather for after-school holiday parties and lessons, and is planning to hire a teacher to lead a twice-weekly class in Hebrew and Judaism.

Unterman says her family makes a special effort to get to shul every week, get the kids to youth group or synagogue programs and do holiday projects at home — she even sends some of the projects for the whole class to do at Canfield.

She has enrolled her kids at the religious school at Temple Beth Am, a Conservative synagogue, where they learn Hebrew through an immersion program. Other families are using online Hebrew instruction and some are trying a host of new programs that have emerged.

Stefanie Etshalom, who has taught at several day schools and lives across the street from Canfield, has about 15 kids enrolled in her Torah Learning Club.

“They need a safe place to come where they feel good about being Jewish,” Etshalom said.

NCSY, the Orthodox Union’s youth group, just started The J, a twice-a-week program for middle school kids with classes on Jewish traditions and texts, and a course in modern Hebrew.

NCSY already has educational programs in place for high schoolers through its Jewish Student Union clubs at public schools and regular discussion sessions at local kosher restaurants and coffee shops.

Rabbi Eyal Rav-Noy and his wife, Tzipi, who run the Jewish Learning Academy, have devised a new curriculum for teaching Hebrew, one they say should have kids reading Hebrew fluently within 20 weeks, and they plan to add a Judaic component to the program.

Miriam Duman Goldberg is looking at the program for her two boys, in first and third grade. Her third-grader moved to Canfield from day school in the middle of kindergarten, and her younger child started soon after. The school has been a good fit for both of them.

“We found the ability to see the whole child better at public schools, which really surprised us,” she said.

Still, she laments that her younger son doesn’t yet know the whole aleph bet, though they do work on the weekly Torah portion at home.

Goldberg has volunteered as a room parent to keep an eye on issues like kosher food or scheduling on Shabbat, but she says Canfield — from teachers to other parents — has been more than accommodating. At Beverly Vista, an elementary school in Beverly Hills, kosher pizza is offered every week, and kosher options are available in the cafeteria.

Beth Raanan, who is vice president of Friends of Canfield and has been a parent in the school for five years, says the jump this year in the numbers of both Orthodox and Israeli families has been striking. She says the families have integrated well into the student body, something she hopes will continue even as the temptation grows to stick together.

“It’s always been a diverse community, and our community is used to being very welcoming,” she said.

Unterman is thrilled so far with Canfield, but, she admits, she’s not sure what will happen after fifth grade.

“I’m petrified about sending my kids to middle school,” she said. She might reintegrate them into day school, and she is already laying the groundwork necessary to get into a magnet school.

Elkin, at PEJE, says day schools need to continue improving so that families stay in.

“The challenge is really to keep kids in the system and keep them as long as possible, and to make it as compelling and as exciting and as irresistible as possible,” he said. “We have to make this a value proposition, with the highest quality general and Judaic studies. And we need to hope that a moderately improving economic environment will help reduce the number of people who are leaving.”

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