Milken Community Schools has named educator Sarah Shulkind as its new head of school, effective July 1.
Shulkind, 40, previously served as Milken’s middle school principal before becoming head of school at Sinai Temple’s Sinai Akiba Academy in 2012. She succeeds Robert Wexler, who was Milken’s interim head of school after Gary Weisserman left at the end of the 2017-18 school year.
“It is an amazing professional opportunity, and I am really excited to pursue it,” Shulkind told the Journal after the announcement. “I’ve had a chance to meet the board and I am excited to work with the wonderful lay leaders [at Milken].”
Milken Community Schools is a college preparatory day school, with 750 students in grades 7-12. Shulkind will lead both the Saperstein Middle School Campus, which has about 100 students per grade, and the Upper School Campus, which has 135 students per grade.
Shulkind credited her previous stint at Milken for preparing her for her upcoming position. “It made me realize I am a Jewish educator,” she said. “Before then, I worked in public and private education and not in a Jewish environment. It was then I saw the value of what a Jewish school can provide.”
“It is an amazing professional opportunity, and I’m really excited to pursue it.”
— Sarah Shulkind
Richard Sandler, chair of the Milken head-of-school search committee, said Shulkind was well-equipped to take the reins at the school. “She’s young, she’s very bright, she’s got a great background [and] she’s accomplished a lot,” he said.
In a Feb. 25 statement to Milken alumni, Sandler and Milken Board of Trustees Chair Lise Applebaum said, “All those involved in the search process were extremely impressed by Dr. Shulkind’s broad experience in educational leadership, including having served right here at Milken Community Schools as our Middle School principal. The Board of Trustees was also very impressed by Dr. Shulkind’s profound understanding of current trends in private school education. … We are confident that under Dr. Shulkind’s creative leadership, our school will continue to meet the challenge of providing a quality education that emphasizes academic excellence, personal growth and a caring community.”
During her seven years at Sinai Akiba Academy, the statement said, Shulkind helped grow the school’s endowment fund, attracted gifts to its programs and capital projects, expanded its J-STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) program and introduced innovative education approaches into its curriculum.
Shulkind has a bachelor’s degree in English and history from the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors; a master’s in education from Harvard University; and a doctorate in education from UCLA.
