School Board Blues

$\Barry Shrage, president of Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston, said his federation’s focus on Jewish education over 20 years will help bridge the transition when CJP cuts funding for the Boston Board of Jewish Education.$

\Barry Shrage, president of Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston, said his federation’s focus on Jewish education over 20 years will help bridge the transition when CJP cuts funding for the Boston Board of Jewish Education.

by Carolyn Slutsky
Staff Writer

In a move that some see as the latest in a string of necessary budget cuts and others as part of a growing national trend, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Boston federation, voted to end funding to its Board of Jewish Education, effectively causing the BJE to close its doors at the end of July.

“We confirmed that day schools, camps and new models of supplemental education have become more central to delivering Jewish experiences to families and children ... but we realized that our approach to funding and programming needed to change,” wrote CJP President Barry Shrage in a letter sent out at the end of last month. CJP provides more than $1 million of the BJE’s $1.3 million budget. “The community needs a

more streamlined structure that reduces overhead, improves quality of service and accelerates new ways of delivering Jewish education.”

Shrage told The Jewish Week that CJP has placed Jewish education at the top of its priority list for 20 years, and that, “in light of the economy we wanted direct services to get the maximum amount of money.”
He added that in many cities the bulk of Jewish educational planning and advocacy stems from the federation, so eliminating funding for the BJE will cut out the middleman and enable CJP to give money and guidance directly to day and synagogue schools as well as camps and other informal educational programs.

Danny Margolis, executive director of Boston’s BJE, said he hasn’t had a chance yet to convene his board and discuss whether the agency will close or continue to operate in an extremely changed capacity. He added that CJP never fully recognized the need for a strong central agency, but that he hadn’t anticipated such a significant drop in funding.

Central agencies for Jewish education vary in size and mission, generally offering curricular materials, professional development for teachers and other services to Jewish schools. The Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York so far seems unaffected by cuts other agencies are experiencing.
Brandeis historian Jonathan Sarna recently wrote in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles about the abandonment of Jewish education during the Great Depression, and how American Jewry never made up for that loss; some observers now worry the Jewish community is repeating its past mistake.
Though the situation is perhaps most stark in Boston, other communities across North America are facing similar crises where money is short, and some are going the way of Boston in determining to reduce or eliminate their central agencies, which now may not be as relevant as they once were.
In Toronto the Mercaz, the educational wing of the federation, “drastically downsized” in March, according to Jonathan Woocher, chief ideas officer and director of the Lippman Kanfer Institute at the Jewish Educational Service of North America (JESNA). Woocher also cited communities in South Palm Beach County, Fla., northern New Jersey and Seattle as those with struggling or on-the-verge-of-closing central agencies. [Despite observers who said the Mercaz closed, Howard English, a spokesperson at the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, said it did not close but that it has been “streamlined ... to four people, with a director of the department yet to be hired and the possibility that others will be hired as well,” adding that funding for the city’s Jewish education will not be threatened by the restructuring.]

“When you look closely it becomes a more nuanced picture,” said Woocher of the differing needs in various communities.

“In this difficult economic time there are a number of communities who made a decision to eliminate or dramatically change the way they deliver educational support and services,” he said, but stopped short of calling the situation a “trend.”

But Jeffrey Lasday, former director of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE), a national group that closed earlier this year, another victim of the economy, said that as federations are struggling with the new economy, Jewish education is often one of the first places cuts are made.
“It’s short-sighted, we’re losing dozens of Jewish educators, losing agencies that offered a core service to the community, and once the economy does start getting better it’ll be hard to rebuild,” he said.
“It definitely seems now we’re going backward, at this point we’re retracting and we have yet to see a group or hear a voice saying, ‘Let’s get together and think creatively,’” he added. “I think it’s an across-the-board loss.”

In New York, however, the situation seems more optimistic.
Robert Sherman, CEO of the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York and chair of the Association of Directors of Central Agencies for Jewish Education, a national umbrella group, said his agency is “actually on a very powerful upward trajectory,” with UJA-Federation of New York having invested $3 million over the coming years. The BJE is also in the process of merging with SAJES, Long Island’s central agency, a move that both he and SAJES Executive Director Deborah Friedman see as combining the best of both agencies while saving costs in a down economy.

Though the merger, which should go through by summer, bodes well for New York, Sherman and Friedman are closely watching what their colleagues around the country are experiencing, wondering if Boston, Toronto and other cities are harbingers of things to come.

“I don’t know if it’s a trend, but what’s clear is that every community is under terrific strain now,” said Sherman. “There are incredible demands upon shrinking [funds] and every community is trying to figure out how to target their resources.”

In addition to rethinking how money is disbursed, the current crisis has caused observers to question just how relevant central agencies are in a changing financial and educational landscape.

“It’s not our position that everything should remain just as it is in the central agency world and that every agency is functioning perfectly,” said JESNA’s Woocher. “We are working vigorously in partnership with the leadership of the central agencies nationally to strengthen the agencies, build their capabilities in a number of key areas and help them become more effective as agents for change in their communities. Our concern is that the processes in Toronto and Boston resulted in far more drastic and, we believe, ultimately less beneficial actions for the community than were needed or warranted, including the loss of a great deal of professional expertise.”

Even Seymour Epstein, the former director of the central agency in Toronto who was let go with the restructuring of the Mercaz, said the roles boards of Jewish education play are vital.
“My perspective is there’s absolutely a need for a central agency,” he said, adding that it could be an independent body or one run, like Toronto’s, through the federation. “[It] has a different perspective than any given school, they have the full population in mind and a wider pluralistic perspective than any ideological or geographic niche within the community.”

In Los Angeles, the local federation, which provides 50 percent of the BJE’s funding, is “reimagining itself,” according to BJE Executive Director Gil Graff, so the BJE’s stance is fluid.
Still, he said, the need for a central agency is key.
“In a time of economic downturn and escalating needs the case needs to be made that there is tremendous value in a linking agency that makes something greater than the sum of its parts,” Graff said.

He added that losing the BJEs for the quick fix of a direct distribution of cash to educational organizations will undermine the achievements those organizations could have made with the guidance the BJE can supply.

Friedman, of SAJES, said she, too, sees a need for central agencies to continue.
“To have a central agency for Jewish education I think is relevant and important for the greater community,” she said. “We are the agencies that think about how to provide innovative and top educational services for the community. We think about it from early engagement through high school, for our students and families, how to impact them Jewishly.”

Carolyn@jewishweek.org