By Diana Ganger
Imagine rushing an entire sector of our community into an ER under code blue. Jewish ECE, the patient, is choking.
If we believe in Judaism as an ethical guide, promoting decency and dignity, I would suggest that as a community we have to bridge the massive gap between the real and ideal. This is especially visible when we examine the grim reality of how we (under) compensate and (de) value Jewish early childhood educators.
What message are we then sending to families with young children?
We know that Jewish family life starts when the first baby is born. We also know that this is an impressionable time in life of the parents and child, as change takes place and gives possibility to deepen learning and engagement in a community. The Jewish early childhood community continues to learn how to become better at responding to this incredible opportunity. Some excellent programs around the country have propelled these families to increasing levels of engagement, as their experience with a Jewish context ignites the desire for continuity with a rich Jewish life.
At the same time as our Jewish early childhood programs strive for deeper engagement, our community continues to bury our heads in the sand as we careen towards self-destruction.
Why the term self-destruction?
Sitting with seasoned Directors in Jewish Early childhood groups around the country, I hear the same repetitive anxious voices: “We need qualified staff, or at least a bit more than a warm body. I cannot guarantee the continuity of care or quality we had in the past. Our institutions continue to “tax” us or ask for rent when we need every penny to pay to keep our teachers or attract new people to the field.”
We all intuitively know what the research makes clear: teacher quality hugely affects learning. Yet, we routinely tie the hands of Jewish early childhood directors in that they do not have the funding to attract and hire high quality educators.
Directors are also overwhelmed by expectations to do the jobs that multiple people fill in any other nonprofit company. Nowadays, directors need to: keep up with the changes in IT, know how to advertise and sell our programs, be visionary leaders and day-to-day managers, be reflective supervisors, social media mavens, of course know child development, Judaism, how to work with families, and the list goes on and on. I look around these rooms and I see fatigued groups, especially towards the end of the year, as they realize they need to spend the summer hiring. If these directors are lucky enough to find the right person to hire, the process of onboarding requires time, energy and resources on all sides. In short, the process of hiring poses further demands on time and budgets.
From an educator perspective, the field is noble, yet impractical. My daughter, who worked as a lawyer at a large Chicago law firm,decided that she wanted to work in Jewish Early Childhood Education as she began her own family. She believed passionately in the power of Jewish education to impact children and families. I could not blame her, as my own choice had been to stay in Jewish Early childhood Education, and I have enjoyed my choice. Yet, my choice to stay in Jewish Early Childhood Education was made possible only because I knew that my husband had a guaranteed income as a physician. On the one hand my heart rejoiced as our field needs her capacities and wisdom and on the other my heart froze realizing that her family would lose an attorney salary. With all her education and experience, she would hardly be making more than an hourly house cleaner.
How will our community take care of these directors and educators that work tirelessly for the good of our youngest families? A couple of directors in their early 60’s lamented that their friends can retire from public school with good pensions. “We have nothing,” another adds that she felt it was unethical to entice any young college graduates into our field. Teachers who decided many decades ago to join the field for idealistic reasons, are retiring in droves.
The pressures are mounting for directors as the economy overheats, and the alternatives to working many hours in challenging physical and emotional conditions are plentiful. In addition universal Pre-K entices our teachers away with higher salaries and benefits.
How will we support the Jewish early childhood environment with a communal vision?
Where do we want to go as a community in terms of supporting families on a Jewish journey?
How will we maintain high quality Jewish early childhood programs by finally recognizing that educators need fair compensations, benefits and a career ladder?
How can we develop a culture that understands that the Jewish early childhood programs are part of a larger vision of Jewish family journey, and not cash cows?
What s the birthright of these families in terms of access to quality Jewish life in our early childhood experiences?
Can we as a community create a fund that will support excellent programs so that they can keep and attract talent? Can there be a national accreditation that will support this notion?
Let’s imagine that world in which we do not tax families with young children with hefty tuition costs (which in many cases subsidize other programs or institutional needs) and where we do not build our communities on the back of Jewish early childhood staff by denying wages and benefits. We need talent so that families can experience Jewish life at its best!
“Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh”… all Jews are responsible for one another. (Talmud, Shavuot 39a)
What do we want to have the stories of tomorrow to tell about how we dealt with the code blue of our Jewish early childhood centers today?
Diana Ganger works as a coach/consultant in Organizational and Educational settings. A long-time Jewish educator, she was a Fellow of the Wexner Heritage Foundation and a recipient of the 2008 Covenant Award for Excellence in Jewish Education.
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Thank you Diana for staying this so clearly and respresenting all of our voices. We have to take action.
Well done Diana. Everyone in the Jewish ECE field knows this is accurate.
Its an outstanding summary of a critical Jewish communal issue that needs priority from the community. Thankfully there are serious communal efforts in Chicago to begin to communicate and address solutions.
I appreciate your thoughtful and reflective commentary on this critical issue impacting not only early childhood Jewish educators, but also children, families, synagogues, and Jewish day schools . It should be noted that this crisis in compensation is not unique to the Jewish community, and affects early childhood education across the county.
Diana Ganger makes excellent points. Our children’s education should be the first priority, making that education a Jewish one even more so. Providing a quality education, however, isn’t free; it comes at a cost. ECE revenue comes from tuition, as it should. There is no reason why the community, including congregations that operate preschools from which they derive no profit, should be expected to subsidize education for families who prefer to spend their money on luxuries like vacations, clothes, nail appointments, etc. Parents once sacrificed their needs for the sake of their children’s education, today parents sacrifice their children’s education for the sake of their own desires. The wake-up call should be to parents so that they will prioritize Jewish education. Then we can compensate our professionals as they deserve.
In reply to Mr. Allen’s comment, we wish it were as easy as asking parents to trade nail appointments and vacations for tuition. Saving the discussion of why nail appointments and family vacations might be important self care for tired parents for another time, it is sadly not true that institutions such as synagogues are not making profits from ECC’s. The early childhood centers often pay hefty “rent” or become cash cows for the host institutions, despite being a vehicle for attracting young families to become life-long members of the host institution. Your stance also assumes that young families (who often struggle to balance work and parenting) have the means to pay huge tuition rates for Jewish early childhood centers if they simply choose to do so. As one parent that chose public school over Jewish school told me, “Even with a scholarship, it’s tuition or my children’s clothes.”
Diana
This is so well written and your emotional voice and powerful messsge come through in every sentence!
Thank you for taking the time to write this important article.
Your comments are excellent. As a former Director in ECE It is shameful that our staff with master’s.degree and beyond get no compensation. No medical no pension.. However we can spend millions of dollars on renovation with bigger offices and more classrooms which stay empty. Look at the salaries of the Rabbis and Cantors and then look at ECE salaries of our staff. and the disparity is huge . ECE is the backbone of any congregation without it your membership goes down. I was in the field for 34 years and I loved it
Hanne Holsten May 2018
Thank you all for responding-always refreshing to hear back! Hope the dialogue continues as this reality needs to change. There are very few inspired Dayschools that have the same salary scale for ECE faculty as the rest of the school.
Thanks Diana for announcing so loudly and clearly the urgency of this matter. I do hope that your writing will shake the community and lead to action! Like you, I see the same picture all over the country and the impact this negligence has on the entire Jewish ecosystem. The Jewish community is affected by the grim reality you described. This reality affects day schools, supplementary schools, the connections to Israel, Hebrew language and the Jewish tradition to name a few.
I do want to give credit to some communities and organizations that are investing in early education. Readers can learn about some of them at the recent JEEF Newsletter:
https://jeefnews.blogspot.com/2018/03/
I also wanted to highlight that in this area, we can learn a lot from Israel. In Israel, free early education starts at the age of three. Preschool teachers receive benefits, curriculum is written by experts, teachers must participate in intense training, there are programs for parents and much more. I work closely with the Haifa municipality and see this work in action.
I urge the entire Jewish community to take action now! We can’t afford to wait any longer.
Rachel Raz,
Director of the Early Childhood Institute, Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education at Hebrew College
Director of the Boston Haifa Early Childhood Educators’ Connection.
Founder of JEEF (National Jewish Early Engagement Forum)
[email protected]
Where is the innovation?
When I look at the Jewish ECE sector, I see a sector that has lacked innovation for decades. Sure pedagogies have changed but not much else.
One of the issues this article identifies is “tax” or “rent” charged by host institutions. If that is such a burden, then where is the movement creating independent Jewish Early Childhood Centers? JData, which for years tracked the field, has a list of 1003 ECEs nationwide. Among those, it seems at least 84% are part of a larger institution (synagogue, JCC, Chabad, day school, part time school).
Jewish ECEs are one of the few Jewish institutions that serve a needed market for which a tax payer funded option does not exist! (except some areas with universal Pre-K). If Bright Horizons is able to manage over 600 ECEs for profit in the US, where is the comparable Jewish system? Such standardization and scale could solve the issue of directors being expected to manage various skill sets as there could be centralized HR, Marketing, IT and other services.
Additionally, many Jewish ECEs have not adapted to trends in family needs. As more and more Jewish couples are dual income, families need an ECE solution earlier in their child’s life, yet less than 25% of Jewish ECEs offer infant care. These families also need longer hours so they can drop their child off, get to work, and be able to work a full day before having to pick up their child. The solution is longer days yet less than half of our centers operate 8 or more hours a day.
I am a huge supporter of Jewish ECEs and you are welcome to read a longer piece I authored a few years ago on the topic (link below). I agree that the Jewish community needs to support early childhood. Yet, in a time when young Jews are less institutional, when they are moving to neighborhoods that lack existing Jewish infrastructure, when they require more expansive services, when they are burdened with school debt unlike any prior generation, I think the field needs some disruptive innovation to create sustainable solutions to the identified issues.
http://jeducationworld.com/2016/12/jewish-preschools-need-to-address-family-needs-not-be-free/
Diane- it’s like you read my mind!! I talk about these questions all the time. Thank you so much for wiriting this!!
Beth Rabinowitz
Thank you Diana for shining a spotlight on the state of Jewish Early Childhood Education.
It makes me so sad when young professional women share that they have no choice but to leave this profession because they simply cannot afford to live on the salary. An exceptional teacher recently told me that she can no longer worry each month if she will have sufficient money to cover her living expenses and her student loans. Her departure from the school she works at will certainly be felt by the children, parents, her colleagues and the administration!
Really wish this was not our reality!
Diana,
You very clearly expressed what every Jewish educator feels. Thankfully, my husband provides the primary income for our household. I often tease that he supports my teaching habit. While I say it in jest, the reality is that if I had to be the sole support for my family, I’d have to leave the profession. Very sad.