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This week in Federation
Upcoming Board Meeting to Discuss JCDSRI Funding

June 19, 2006

The Big Buzz this week was the special Board meeting called for June 26th at 7:30pm at the JCC. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss and vote upon a $1,225,000 request over 5 years from the Jewish Community Day School.

Many questions and rightly so. It’s a lot of bread. It would be inappropriate for me to try to answer those question – that’s the President’s job - but let me give you some background. It’s complicated with several balls in the air at once, so stick with me.

Back in February of 2005, the Federation made a decision after a great deal of process: establish a community day school – a “school of excellence”, and money was allocated for start-up costs for the Jewish Community Day School (or, “JCDS”, as attorneys would say).

And the ball started to roll. A JCDS head of school was engaged (Dani Steiner) and he moved here. He, together with others, began a monumental task, one easy to say but difficult and time consuming to do: evaluate what we have now and decide what changes to make – changes in curriculum, changes in faculty, changes in the organizational structure, changes in administrative staff – all to create a community school of excellence.

You should know that informational conversations have been held between Federation and the JCDS since last fall, and the Federation during the winter turned to the Bureau of Jewish Education to recommend a future funding policy for both the Jewish Community Day School and the Providence Hebrew Day School. That’s the Day School Liason Committee of the Bureau.

About three weeks ago, JCDS approached Federation with a request for capital improvements to their present site. The President did what Presidents do: he appointed a JCDS Funding Task Force of nine people who, on very short notice, met twice - 7 people + 2 from JCDS + 2 staffers from the Bureau of Jewish Education. While their charge was to review a capital improvement request, they quickly realized that there were additional program needs required for next year, but the validation of program needs has been and will continue to be within the province of the Bureau.

Some facts are important to realize. First, any programmatic changes (read: hire additional staff) is either done now or waits – probably a year. Second, it’s sort of difficult to reconstruct classrooms and relocate building entrances when students are around.

So our President had a decision to make. He could have done nothing with the proposal, which would have had the effect of delaying any changes for a year. But he discussed it with his consigliore, as he frequently does, and has chosen to let the Board make that decision. Thus the reason for the special meeting.

In addition, and just to complete this complicated picture, there is yet another committee. This JFRI-appointed group, an ad-hoc Fiscal Review Committee, will review financial issues at the Providence Hebrew Day School, and the first meeting of that committee is next week. The President has requested a report no later than September 1st.

So let’s keep our eye on the ball and remember that Federation is committed to a community that has day schools of excellence and has a vision for a community of learners engaged in Jewish learning.

The Board will make an important decision on Monday night at the special Board meeting. If you are on the Board, I do hope you will come and be part of that decision. You will hear about the educational vision for the community, the process undertaken so far, and a presentation of plans, restructuring and figures from the school So if you haven’t responded to Gail Putman, please do so.

In the meantime, please feel free to share your comments with the President or me and have a good weekend. I hope your week was as exciting (?) as mine. Shabbat Shalom!

Hershey.

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