BJE.

Yesterday, in a special meeting (it was telephonic--under our new bylaws, we can have a special telephonic meeting) the Board of Trustees voted to apply for re-affiliation with BJE (formerly the Bureau of Jewish Education), an agency associated with the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Kadima withdrew from the Bureau several years ago, recognizing that the Bureau, with its focus upon personnel, instead of educational, issues, had lost its relevance to Kadima and was potentially shackling Kadima's efforts to improve itself.

Fortunately, over the last several years, the BJE engaged in its own strategic review to find better ways of promoting Jewish education Los Angeles. The BJE discussed these changes in a newsletter that you can read here. Importantly, the BJE recognized that its Code of Personnel Practices, which was designed primarily to apply to afterschool religious schools, no longer seemed particular relevant. As the BJE wrote in its newsletter:

"Recently, educators and school boards of Jewish schools served by BJE voted to “sunset” a longstanding Code of Personnel Practices. The Code, developed at a time when most Jewish schools were part time “Talmud Torah”programs, regulated aspects of the employment relationship between schools and educators who taught Hebrew and Jewish studies.

“Increasingly many stakeholder groups expressed concerns about issues that were seen as more appropriately managed between employee and employer,”said BJE Executive Director, Dr. Gil Graff.

As a result, effective June, 2009, the BJE has began to sunset the much maligned Code. The result is that the BJE will be seen by schools for what, in my view, it should be: a community organization dedicated to promoting and facilitating Jewish education, instead of a "super-personnel board" that serves little function but to review school personnel decisions and chilling school improvement efforts.

By becoming part of the BJE, Kadima will benefit from a variety of community services and grants, and we are excited about it. Like the BJE, Kadima has made its own strategic adjustments of late in order to improve itself. Together, Kadima and the BJE can do great things.

Family Adventure.

This is a reminder to be sure to buy your tickets to the Family Adventure set for May 23.

It is going to be a great day for everyone.

Eighth Graders Return from Israel.

Kadima participates in a partnership with the Yad Singlovksi school in Israel. This past two weeks, our eight graders have had quite an adventure. You can read about it here.

Completion and Refocus.

Last week was an exhausting one. Not only was my day job busy (yes, I do have a day job, and every so often it must take priority), but Kadima was busy, too, in that we had a Board meeting last Wednesday and it was an emotional one.

For the past three years or so, various members of the Board have been working on updating the Bylaws for the school. Why? Because the bylaws were old, contained a variety of errors, were vague and ambiguous in parts, and did not reflect best practices for independent schools. So we had to update and revise them. But any time you start messing with the Bylaws, people get nervous. And so, last Wednesday, after several review periods, numerous meetings and something like a thousand revisions, we finally put the new bylaws to a vote. The Board must approve Bylaw amendments by a 2/3 vote; this is a good thing; it requires us to forge a general consensus before we make any changes.

After much discussion, the Board approved the new Bylaws by a vote of 15-3-1. The new Bylaws will formalize much of what we've been doing anyway, and also provide certain procedural improvements (like having special meetings by conference call). Yet, it is a significant achievement for the Board.

With this major effort completed, the focus becomes long term strategic planning and fundraising. We've spent this year building a foundation for Kadima's future success. With a new Head of School, new Bylaws, new officers, and soon to be new principals, we are laying the groundwork for the future of Kadima. But now we need to look forward. Accordingly, for the next several months we will begin developing a Long Term Strategic Plan and then implementing the tactical decisions to reach the goals indicated in the plan.

We'll certainly keep you updated on our efforts as we develop our strategic plan for ensuring Kadima's future.

Annual Event Coming Up.

On May 23, 2010, we will be having our annual fundraising event--Kadima Family Adventure: Kickoff Our 40th Anniversary. We'll be having a similar event to what we had last year, which was absolutely terrific. It is an all day, all you can eat extravaganza, with zip lines, rock walls, swimming, inflatables, cotton candy, food, etc. It's a great time and you'll be providing critical funds to Kadima.

I'll have more about this in the days ahead, but be sure to mark Sunday, May 23, 2010, as a Kadima day.

Hard Weeks.

For the Tuition Assistance Committee, these are the hardest weeks.

The school sent out the Tuition Assistance Awards, and in many situations, people are disappointed with the grant they received. They look at the letter and they see a grant number that is lower than the number they requested. They are upset and frustrated.

What to do?

People can file an appeal of their award; however, in most cases, appeals will be only be granted if there is new or additional information that could not have been brought with the original application for assistance. But the Committee will examine all appeals. So if you think that you have a compelling reason for an additional grant, or you have new information to support your application, you should appeal.
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The entire issue of Tuition Assistance raises a whole host of philosophical questions for the school and its leadership. Any good private school education costs a lot of money to operate; to have excellence, you have to come up with money to pay for the teachers, the facilities, the books, the supplies, and everything else that makes a school great.

Yet, at this time of year, we often hear the mantra of "any Jewish child who wants a Jewish day school education should be able to get one, and should not be turned away because of a lack of funds." Yes, that's true, and we all agree upon it. But simply saying this doesn't make it a reality. Some very generous people have given millions to help Jews get day school educations, but even these millions are not enough to make Jewish Day Schools affordable for everyone. There simply is not the overwhelming community commitment to Jewish private schools that would allow for effective cost spreading.

Nonetheless, Kadima gives its families lots of financial aid. As a percentage of our budget, we probably give more than most schools. Indeed, if we cut our aid in half, we'd be in much better financial position (assuming, of course, that our students didn't leave or we were able to replace our financial aid students with full paying students). But we're not going to do that, because we do believe in trying to make Jewish education as affordable as we can. It is important to recognize, however, that we do not have unlimited funds; as a result, the Tuition Assistance Committee struggles to allocate fairly the limited funds we have for Tuition Assistance. The Committee does excellent work in a most difficult job.

Ultimately, however, I think that we all need to ask ourselves some serious questions around this time of year:

• What are our priorities? Do we believe that providing our children with an excellent, rigorous, effective education in a Jewish private school is a priority for us? If it is, should we provide tuition assistance to a person who chooses to live in a multi-million dollar house, drive fancy cards, and run up enormous credit card debt, but as a result simply does not have enough income left over to send their kids to Jewish private school? Is a family who purchased several rental properties and now finds itself suffering in the recession--and the rental properties are empty and underwater-- eligible for financial aid over the family that owns their home, has decent income, but lives modestly precisely because it knows that it has to pay for their childrens' private school?
  

• Should the school, in an effort to "get kids in the door" reward people who "hold out"?
  

• Do we give out as much aid as asked, in the hope that we will make up the difference on an increased volume of students? If we gave what everyone asked, and we didn't attract new students, we would surely close. And we know, from last year's experiment, that reducing the price 25% is not enough to attract enough students to justify the discount.
  

• At what point do we decide to make a Kadima education something that only the elite can afford? When do we say, "you know what, this family simply cannot afford to come to this school. It's sad, but absent a community commitment, we simply can't offer our education to those who are completely unable to afford it?" Or are we already at this point?
  

These are all tough questions. We don't have any of the answers. But the TA Committee and the school leadership continues to wrestle with them.

The Next Few Months.

I hope everyone had a good Pesach and enjoyed their pizza, beer, sushi, or whatever treat they had last night.

The Board will be gearing up for what promises to be an exciting couple of months. During April, May and June, we will be:

• Voting on a proposed restatement of the bylaws.
• Reviewing and approving a budget for next school year.
• Finding, selecting and approving a new Board for next year.
• Learning the identities of our new General Studies and Judaic Studies principals.
• Encouraging everyone to attend our annual event in May.
• Working to ensure that our student population continues to grow.
• Evaluating our Head of School.

It's going to be a busy few months.