Whirlwind.

Updated--October 20, 2009.

The last several days have been a bit of a whirlwind.

Last week, we learned that our principal, Yuri Hronsky, had accepted a position as Head of School at Heschel West Day School, beginning next year. Yuri is an integral part of our administration, serving as the principal of the school, and having previously ran the middle school. As you might expect, for a school like Kadima that has been through much change lately, the announcement that Yuri is leaving was disappointing to many of us. We had hoped that he would be part of our team for some time. But it is not uncommon for people to move on when opportunity knocks.

But just as opportunity knocked for Yuri, so it has for Kadima. Bill Cohen, our head of school, will be searching for the best principal we can find. It really is a chance for us to continue our effort to move forward and place in that position a strong academic leader for the school.

Change is hard. It is much easier to be just keep things the way they are. But it remains fundamental to Kadima's future success. Yet, the leadership recognizes that only through conducting our own critical thinking and analysis (we don't just want our school to teach these values, we have to exercise them ourselves), can we continue to work to make Kadima a unique place, where academic values permeate both general and Judaic studies, a place where kids learn to question and analyze, to live and to love, all guided by the wisdom of Torah.

Important Announcement Today.

As many of you may know, the school announced that Yuri will be leaving as principal at the end of the school year.

I'll have more about this in the days ahead, and certainly after Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom.

Magazines!!!

Based upon early calculations, it appears that the Kadima community has responded spectacularly to our magazine drive. While we don't have final figures yet, we do know that we surpassed our goal of selling more than $15,000 in magazines. Kadima gets half of the gross value sold, so this is an excellent boost to Kadima's PTO and their efforts to support the school.

Kol HaKavod to the students and parents who sold magazines!

[And to my wife, Laura-Beth, who organized the effort!]

Preparing for College in Kindergarten.

This past summer The Economist had an article about private schools that flew in the face of everything we're seeing in the Los Angeles day school community: the Economist wrote that despite the recession, private schools were doing just fine, thank you. Of course, if you look at the Jewish Day School world, the information is just the opposite: the recession threatens the very existence of schools throughout the country. Hence, PEJE's decision to refocus itself toward a macro vision of promoting best practices instead of a micro vision of helping specific schools.

In his recent blog, Pat Bassett, the head of NAIS, notes the distinction between parochial and independent schools, writing:

"So, what we’ve found in the US and Britain is largely a fierce commitment to private schools, even during hard times. This commitment is especially true for independent schools in the US — schools whose attrition is near normal nominal rates, in stark contrast to enrollment attrition in parochial schools, where attrition has become in many locales debilitating, as the system’s funds have dried up and where the socio-economic base doesn’t have the family reserves to sustain children in the schools" (emphasis added).

Bassett writes that while "at the deepest level", parents remain committed to the values of an independent school, something more is going on: parents are also deeply interested in the college preparatory aspects of the program, even at the elementary school level. Bassett states:

"So, what is driving the loyalty to independent schools? At the deepest levels, NAIS believes that independent school families appreciate the value-set of our schools, see the peer attitudes/ kid culture as affirming of an orientation necessary for success, appreciate the culture and climate the faculty instill in terms of “knowing and valuing” each child, and, in this particular moment of economic uncertainty, accordingly commit to whatever it takes to keep their children safe and secure in a familiar and working educational setting. In short, parents seems to have concluded, “Let’s sacrifice as needed to keep the kids in their school so we at least don’t have to worry about their well-being, while we sort out how to hold the rest of our economic lives together.”

But Bassett also notes that commitment to independent schools involves something more than just a commitment to certain values. Indeed, parochial schools are all about values education, but they are struggling. Bassett thus states:

"All NAIS schools that I know of are "college-prep" schools, including the elementary schools, and the Montessori and Waldorf schools, and even the LD schools, by which I mean that parents choose our schools because they want their kids to go to college and to be successful there . . .So we shouldn't be at all defensive about being "college-prep" as one of our primary calling cards; we should be much clearer in our marketing of all schools, including elementary schools, that “college-prep” is what we do, in additional to a myriad of other no less important but less easily trackable outcomes" (emphasis added).

I think that Bassett has it right. I have been in countless meetings with community members and others who downplay academic rigor and mock those parents who want their kids to attend the "best" college for their children. They say that "getting Johnny into the best college" isn't important, but knowing about tikkun olam is.

But this is disingenuous. Both are equally important. Our parents (and many of these same parents who mock academic rigor) send their children to private schools precisely because they hope that it will both help their kids get into the best college for their students and provide a values oriented environment. I think that discounting academic rigor is a big mistake; one of Kadima's strengths, historically, is that our program is academic, is rigorous, and does prepare kids for college. We shouldn't shy away from this; we shouldn't be afraid to say that Kadima is an academic institution.

Yes, we must never forget that our schools are based and committed to certain sacred and Jewish values; and we must never forget that forging a sacred community for our parents and children is essential for our success; however, at the same time, we must also never forget that our parents, in the end, send their kids to private school because they want their kids to reach their highest academic potential. We must make sure that our program both provides values and academic excellence.

At Kadima, we're striving to do just that.

PEJE Changes Direction.

The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education was founded about 20 years ago in an effort to foster Jewish Day School education. It provides a compendium of best practice materials, as well as various grants to Day School institutions. Kadima, in fact, has been blessed to get a variety of PEJE grants; they've come in the form of admissions experts, general consultants, and marketing specialists. We have a marketing consultant meeting with our marketing committee at the end of the month.

But with the Great Recession, things change, including PEJE. As a result, PEJE has decided to narrow its focus toward general sustainability of Jewish Day School educaiton. Its efforts will focus upon Head of School Development, Strategic Lay Leadership Development, and Financial Sustainability. PEJE puts it this way:

"While PEJE invested its resources during its first 12 years in seeding new schools and
building the capacity of existing schools, the new reality calls for higher-level leadership that focuses on sustaining the growth day schools have already achieved. Engaging school leaders, industry consultants, and Jewish communal leadership with PEJE experts in our strategic planning process, we identified three critical levers for day school sustainability: inspiring professional leadership, strategic board governance, and financial sustainability."

Of most important, is PEJE's statement that:

"To ensure the greatest impact for day schools, PEJE will be working at the regional and national levels with federations, denominational networks, foundations, central education agencies, and philanthropists."

In other words, the days of individual schools--like Kadima--receiving grants is over. PEJE will be focusing its efforts on a broader level, and apparently will not provide the detailed assistance it previously has. This also means that we will increase pressure upon us to raise our own funds. It also means that Kadima cannot go it alone; the big money and the big contributions may flow through major organizations, including the Jewish Federation and its BJE. We may need to reconsider our connection (or lack thereof) with the BJE.

It will be interesting to see how PEJE's change of direction influences day schools. PEJE has been a big player in Jewish Day Schools in the past; the future may be different.

Buy Magazines.

We are approaching the end of Kadima's magazine drive, and we need to sell more magazines. To ensure excellence, we need the best of everything, and the best of everything costs money. Lots of it. Buying magazines during our magazine drive is an easy way to relax, get informed, or improve your mind (depending upon the magazine you read) and also a great way to support Kadima. Here's how you do it:

1. Click http://www.qsp.com/store/Index.aspx

2. Enter Kadima’s School Number: 425005037

3. Order magazines
4. Enter your child’s name or any current Kadima student’s name at the end of the transaction so that the student earns prizes.

Thanks for all your help.

Back.

I disappeared for about three weeks, and along with my absence, so did the traffic to the blog. I suspect we'll get more traffic over the next several weeks since there is a reference to the blog on the Kadima website. We will also put a regular message in the Kol Echad referencing the blog. If you have feedback on the blog, please let me know.

But enough about what hasn't been happening.

Shanah Tovah and Sukkot Sameach.

With the holidays and my day job, there has been little time for blogging. But that doesn't mean that people haven't been busy at Kadima. We've been running a magazine drive, and I urge everyone to participate in it.

Moreover, over the past several weeks, our Board Committees have been meeting, and preparing reports for review by the Board at the next Board meeting on October 21. Everyone is welcome to come to Board meetings, although there may be sections of the meeting in which we go into Executive Session, the meetings are open to the Community. I urge everyone to attend.

Since my last posting, our Marketing Committee, chaired by Rich Abronson (our Secretary) and Bronwyn Spencer, held a great meeting to discuss the Name issue and bring a recommendation to the Executive Committee and Board for approval. They did not come to consensus on the exact name, but did decide on a few possible options. The Admissions team did a great job in vetting names and researching them. We hope that by the end of our October meeting, we will have a new name for Kadima. It will include Kadima, but may have something instead of "Hebrew Academy" after it.

Pam Teitelbaum led a difficult, but important, discussion regarding our By Laws in our By Laws Committee. Kadima has had a set of By Laws that needs revision, and has struggled over the past several years to complete the revision. Dave Leon and Richard Spencer are going through the By Laws to clean them up; in our next By Law meeting, we will be discussing several structural issues. We hope to complete the process and bring it to the Board by November.

At its retreat in August, the Board asked me, as President, to appoint a Core Documents Committee, to examine Kadima's mission statement, and, "modernize" it. I asked our Executive Vice President, Mark Teitelbaum, to lead a team of thinkers, and they met last night to discuss the Mission Statement. In one night, they accomplished a great deal, and I think that we are our way to defining Kadima in a sharp, incisive, and persuasive way. We're hoping to have something to submit to the Board soon.

Meanwhile, this Thursday, October 8, we'll be installing Bill Cohen, our Head of School at our annual Sukkot Under the Stars Program. I urge all to attend. It will be a great evening, and a wonderful chance to hear some words of wisdom from Bill, and to show support for your school.

And please check this spot for, hopefully, more frequent updates as to what is going on at Kadima. I'll try to update more frequently in the days ahead.

See you on Thursday night at the Kadima sukkah!