Program Overview

Program Areas 2003-2006

Grantmaking
PEJE's focus on growing the enrollment in Jewish day schools influences our grantmaking. The PEJE Challenge Grant for Day School Growth includes the School Improvement Journey, Pipeline, and New School grant programs. These grants provide a combination of professional assessment (School Improvement Journey only), coaching, and matching cash funds to help schools or planning groups embark on a holistic improvement workplan, strengthen relationships with the early childhood education centers in their area, or establish a new school or new school division.

Coaching & Expertise Delivery
One of the best ways to strengthen a school is to provide experts and expertise. Coaches--veteran PEJE madrikhim, experts in organizational development, and consultants with expertise specific to key areas in Jewish day schools--offer intensive and individualized support for cultivating this kind of leadership.

Conferences
Having convened the largest gathering of day school leaders at the March 2006 PEJE Assembly for Day School Education, PEJE also sponsors regional conferences that target topics critical for day school growth: fundraising, financial management, and recruitment.

Publications
We nourish the field with newsletters, compilations of best practices in key areas, and practical tools for day school development on topics critical for day school growth. These publications deliver expertise and best practices to all day schools and build momentum and energy throughout the day school field. They also serve as a gateway for schools seeking to enter into a more extensive relationship with PEJE.

Research and Knowledge Dissemination
Drawing knowledge from and about the day school field--both through field-wise research projects and in the organic process of gaining and transmitting hands-on knowledge--engenders a sense of direction, achievement, and energy for the movement. PEJE research efforts quantify the achievement of day schools and their impact on the Jewish community, supporting the established evidence of the impact of day school education on Jewish identity. The PEJE Day School Peer Yardstick™ is a management tool to help the day school field identify and understand the key organizational activities associated with large and growing day schools, and to use the resulting measures to encourage data-driven decision making at the school level.

Advocacy
PEJE's advocacy efforts have two targets: to empower individual Jewish day schools to advocate the importance of a day school education in their own communities, and to increase awareness of the benefits of day school education throughout the Jewish community as a whole. PEJE's targeted advocacy tools and suggested strategies influence the general environment in which day schools operate and reshape the vocabulary with which people speak about day schools--on topics like affordability, prioritization of resources, and the value of intensive Jewish education. In this national work, PEJE complements the work of others, such as the JESNA and the major day school networks. We also depend on cooperative relationships with day schools, major donors, federations, agencies for Jewish education, community endowment funds, synagogues, Jewish community centers, and other central agencies in the Jewish community.

Communities of Practice
A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of people with a shared goal--to improve their practice. Guided by a facilitator, they "meet" during regularly scheduled conference calls, via a listserv, and in person, when opportunities arise (e.g., the PEJE Assembly). Through this peer-to-peer collaboration, members of the CoPs are able to: generate knowledge directly related to the work they do; utilize that knowledge back in their schools; and reflect on results in order to make further modifications, as needed. This iterative cycle yields more knowledge that can be widely disseminated to the field.