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Friday December 15, 2006

Jewish day school leaders hard to find, hard to keep

by stacey palevsky
staff writer

The qualifications to be head of a Jewish day school are like a mishmash bagel.

That is to say, there are lots of them — including expertise in secular academics, Judaic studies, curriculum development, leadership, budgeting, fundraising and community relations.

Not to mention the ability to work with youngsters.

Four Bay Area Jewish day schools are hunting for new leaders, and all agree the diverse, lengthy job qualifications make the search time-consuming and difficult. Then, once the right person is found, the rigors of the job make holding onto that person equally hard.

The whole process is compounded by a national shortage of educators capable of leading Jewish day schools.

“The pool of qualified candidates nationwide is very small,” said Brian Kaye, who’s in charge of the search committee for Jewish Community High School of the Bay. It is the third search in the S.F. school’s six years of existence.

The challenge is especially great for community schools — those unaffiliated with a movement — and high schools, Kaye added. Because the high school day school concept is still newish, there is not yet a strong professional development or degree programs for Jewish high school administrators.

To some extent the day school system, with too many jobs for too few qualified applicants, is the victim of its own success, according to Rabbi Joshua Elkin, executive director of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education in Boston.

“The addition of new schools and the expansion of schools has put a tremendous demand on the Jewish community to supply leaders and teachers. The growth has outstripped the capacity,” he said.

The number of children in day schools has nearly doubled since 1982 to more than 200,000 today, according to a 2003 Avi Chai Foundation census. There are roughly 800 North American day schools; 60 new schools have opened in the past decade alone.

Locally, three of the Bay Area’s 12 day schools, or 25 percent, were founded within the last 10 years.

How to find and retain strong — and qualified — leaders is a perennial topic for day school teachers and administrators, Elkin said.

The need is not going unnoticed. Numerous training programs have started in the past 10 years at Israeli and U.S. universities, but the scale is small. Most programs admit only 15 to 30 people each year.

Yet each year, more than 200 new teachers are needed to fill positions in existing Conservative, Reform and community day schools and to staff new schools, according to a training program at Brandeis University.

“I think there are not enough people going into Jewish education,” said Malka Scheinok of the Bureau of Jewish Education in San Francisco. She was on the search committee for a new head of Tehiyah Jewish Day School in El Cerrito. The school chose a new director last week.

“It’s not that we didn’t have applicants, but many weren’t qualified to run a Jewish day school,” she added.

The problem is not exclusive to Jewish schools, however.

Statistics point to a severe shortage of candidates for administrative positions both in California and nationally, according to the Association of California School Administrators. In a 1999 survey, 90 percent of superintendents polled reported a shortage in the pool of candidates for the last advertised high school principal opening; 73 percent reported a shortage of elementary school principal candidates. The shortage will likely grow as baby boomer principals begin to retire.

The next challenge, for all schools, is retention. Because of the demands of the job, the turnover rate is high, research shows. The average head of school stays in his or her post for three to six years.

“I think it’s hard to find a good fit. You want someone … who can wear a lot of different hats,” Scheinok said. “But heads of school can get burned out after a while. The day never seems to end.”

Rabbi Reuven Greenvald started at Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto two years ago. He’s leaving in June, and the school is in the midst of a national search for his replacement. He said he wants to return to the East Coast.

“It is not an impossible job, but it is a hard job,” he said. “You have help with a great administration and staff, but ... there’s a huge canvas of things to think about.”

Greenvald has 20 years of experience in Jewish education. But numerous administrators have less than that, since the national shortage results in promoting people before they’re ready for the job’s demands, Kaye said.

There’s no quick fix, educators say. Kaye hopes to see more training programs and resources in the future, especially those opportunities that pay a living wage.

“People going into the field who aspire to become heads are extremely valuable to the Jewish community,” Kaye said. “The more knowledgeable Jewish educators are, the stronger the Jewish community will be in our future.”

JTA contributed to this story.

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