Jewish Preschools

Like their young students, Jewish preschools growing rapidly in Boston

Currently, there are 37 Jewish preschools in the region, with just over 2,000 children enrolled in them. Some are small, serving 20 or 30 families. Some, such as New England Hebrew Academy in Brookline, educate more than 100 children. Then there are the Jewish Community Center Preschools, which enroll more than 600 children at their six sites.

Jewish preschools are alive, well and a force to be reckoned with," said Lisa Kritz, director of the Erna and Julius Hertz Nursery School at Temple Israel of Sharon.Enrollment at the Jewish preschools has shown some fluctuation in recent years with shifts in demographics and the economy. But the interest in early childhood education seems not to have waned.

The JCC Preschools recently commissioned a study that found "young Jewish families are leaving areas such as Brookline and Brighton and moving north and southwest to areas where they can afford homes," said study director Sherry Grossman.

Enrollment figures also correlate with the number of early Jewish education options available in a particular community. "It depends on how many Jewish preschools there are in the area," she said. "Also … young families who are moving further out are not interested in a long commute for preschool."

The city of Cambridge has added a preschool year to its public school, affecting enrollment at Alef-Bet Preschool, director Judi Zalles told the Advocate. "Some families just can’t afford to send [a child] to a Jewish preschool if the public school has a free program," she noted.

Most Jewish preschools appear to be keeping their enrollments up, but, as one school director conceded, "we have to work at it."

"Here at Temple Israel," Kritz said, "we are starting a new Shabbat morning program for parents of toddlers. We need to work with the congregations and tap into where young families are and make them aware of our programs."

Administrators at Jewish preschools also report that they are serving an increasingly diverse group of families. At the JCCs, 80-85 percent of the children "have at least one Jewish parent," Grossman said. "We …are careful to make our programs welcoming to families from all across the board."

Among the 39 families whose children attend Alef-Bet, Zalles said, "we have some that are Orthodox and a few that are not Jewish." People who are not Jewish enroll their children in the program "because we are careful to make them welcome," Zalles said, "and they have an appreciation for the reverence for family life, community celebration, values and ethics we share."

Often Jewish parents themselves have little knowledge about Judaism and, as Zalles suggested, may use the preschool as an entry point into the community. "Many families come here as a doorway for them to Jewish life," she said. "They would like community support in raising a Jewish child."Similarly, a Newton nursery school administrator sees preschools providing a foundation on which to build a broader Jewish community.

"The community has begun to see preschools as a first step in the Jewish education ladder," said Janet Perlin, nursery school director at Temple Shalom of Newton. "We have created a real Jewish environment for the community. Now, how do we help these parents continue their and their child’s Jewish education? We don’t want them to say, ‘That was a lovely experience,’ and drop it because they can’t sustain it on their own."

Zalles finds that the most effective way to help the parents is to offer a preschool program in which "there is a vibrancy and celebration of life."Orthodox schools, too, are seeing a variety in the backgrounds and goals of their students’ families.

"Still, there is no question," said Esther Ciment, early childhood program director at New England Hebrew Academy, "that parents who send their children here want a strong basic Jewish education. They are happy that we are inspiring their children with a love for Jewish tradition. We hope it will rub off on the parents, too."Families who choose her program, Ciment finds, are particularly interested in the strong framework of values and ethics she tries to communicate to the academy’s students.

"When children learn these things so early," she said, "there is a good chance that they will end up holding onto them throughout their school career."

The issue of children with special needs is an important one for Jewish early childhood programs as they strive for inclusion.The JCCs receive support from the Ledgewood Special Needs Program, which provides early identification and intervention for children ages 3-5. Researcher Sherry Grossman credited this on-site support for what she said has been "a rise in the number of children with special needs."We serve our children, including children with special needs, up to 50 hours a week," Grossman said, "so we have an interdisciplinary team of specialists available to work with families."

Other schools without those resources say they are making sure that their professionals have the skills to handle special needs issues effectively. "We want to include children with special needs, but we need to make sure our teachers receive the professional development to do that," Ciment said.

Ina Regosin, dean of students at Hebrew College in Newton and director of the college’s Early Childhood Institute, reports that there has been increasing interest in the college’s certificates in early childhood Jewish education and in early childhood Jewish education leadership.

"Preschools need to have educated professionals," she said. "This is part of a national push as well."

That interest apparently includes non-Jewish professionals, too. "We have had non-Jewish teachers participate in our certificate programs," Regosin said. "They have committed to teaching at a Jewish school and want to do it well."Or, as Grossman put it, from the perspective of parents, "People are looking for quality first."