During Mental Health Awareness Month, the Jewish communal world rightly turns attention to the well-being of our leaders: rabbis, cantors and nonprofit professionals. These conversations matter. But there is a group we keep leaving out, and the consequences of that omission are catching up to us.

Early childhood centers are often where young families find their first real foothold in Jewish communal life. And every spring, as the school year winds down, those educators are making a crucial decision: come back in September, or not. For too many, the answer is no.

Getty Images

This has been true for years. Early childhood educators have been leaving the field in troubling numbers since well before the pandemic, which accelerated departures that were already underway. Nearly half of all early childhood educators in the United States report experiencing high levels of burnout and stress, according to a nationwide survey of more than 2,300 educators. A separate national survey found that low pay, burnout and mental health challenges were the top three issue areas for these teachers. These figures reflect people who have shown up through a global pandemic, chronic staffing shortages and the compounding grief and fear of Oct. 7, 2023 and its aftermath. For educators in Jewish settings, working at a moment of rising antisemitism adds a layer of stress and anxiety that rarely gets named in these conversations.

Burnout at this scale is a policy choice, not a character flaw. Research examining early childhood educators across the country finds their levels of perceived stress, depression and workplace challenge consistently exceed the national average for other professions, alongside fewer organizational resources to address them.

Teacher turnover in early childhood settings runs roughly twice the rate of K-12 schools, and studies of Head Start programs found that children whose teachers left mid-year showed measurably smaller gains in vocabulary and language compared to peers with stable caregivers.

Young children learn through consistent relationships with trusted adults, and high turnover disrupts exactly that. We have built an essential workforce on a foundation of structural underinvestment and then expressed surprise when people leave.

The good news is that we already know what works: educators who are supported through sustained mentorship and professional development stay and grow in their roles. Over the past three years, ElevatEd has worked across almost 200 centers in 13 communities to build the professional infrastructure that early childhood Jewish educators need. Our emerging educators participate in a full academic year of weekly professional learning. They are paired with experienced mentor teachers who engage in their own yearlong leadership development, meeting with their mentees regularly throughout the school year. 

In end-of-year surveys, 79% of the emerging educators said their participation made it more likely they would remain in their positions for the next few years. That outcome follows from sustained investment: mentors helping educators navigate hard classroom moments, directors building cultures where asking questions is expected, programs treating educators as the skilled practitioners they are. Being seen and invested in consistently, over time, is itself a mental health intervention. It builds the professional confidence and sense of belonging that protect against burnout.

Among the emerging educators who received mentorship, 69% said the experience made it more likely they would stay. Among the mentors themselves, nearly half said the same, a significant finding given that mentors began from a stronger baseline of professional stability, leaving less room for improvement in that measure.

This makes a real difference. Centers where directors participated more intensively in our programming showed stronger results across recruitment, hiring and staff culture and confidence. Across the communities we serve, an estimated 748 new educators were hired over two years with ElevatEd’s support, approximately 65% of them new to Jewish early childhood education entirely. Many of these centers were previously struggling to recruit, so this represents genuine pipeline growth. And when centers are adequately staffed, educators can take real breaks during the day and have dedicated time to plan their lessons, rather than covering for absent colleagues on top of their own classrooms. These are basic conditions of psychological sustainability that the field has too long treated as aspirational.

Jewish early childhood education is among the most powerful drivers of long-term Jewish engagement we have. Research consistently shows that early Jewish experiences shape identity, affiliation and communal connection for decades. Families who enter Jewish life through an early childhood center tend to stay. Sustaining that requires educators who are supported well enough to build careers in this field.

This Mental Health Awareness Month, we need to ask whether our resource decisions match what we say we believe about early childhood education. The educators are still here, still committed, still showing up. The infrastructure to keep them deserves the same sustained investment.

Orna Siegel is the executive director of ElevatEd, a national initiative to transform the field of early childhood Jewish education by recruiting, training, mentoring and supporting teachers and directors.