I typed an eloquent post the other day about my recent job change. And just when it was good and done, ready to publish, down went IE on me and away went a few hundred words of carefully-crafted prose. Ahh, such is life, right?
So, here’s the short version – I left the association I had been with for going on three years, and have settled into a new communications position at Charles E Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville. I’m a member of a new Institutional Advancement office, and work primarily for the head of school and the department director, but the interesting side of the business will be getting involved with the students, and exploiting (I mean, carefully positioning) their activities and successes to advance the larger agenda.
I didn’t want to leave where I was – but things there had gone off the deep end in the last few months, and events since I’ve left have validated my decision. It was one of those things though – do you tough it out and hope that the association politics smooth themselves out? I didn’t see that happening. There are more gory details – aren’t there always gory details? – but its too convoluted to get into right now.
And the new job has a great hidden benefit – snow days! My very first day was a two-hour delay. Since then, another delay, an early dismissal, and three closings (including today). And this holiday weekend includes Friday and Monday. Score!
It’s interesting being in a school environment – my office is in the Lower School, so I see lots of little kids every day. We’re considering sending our oldest there next year for her first grade year.
Anyway, that’s the news I’ve been meaning to post about for a few weeks now. (That, and the wife’s car finally died, and the dealer took it in trade – suckers! – when she bought what I am thinking is the new chick car for the 21st century – the PT Cruiser (with only terse apologies to Cruiser owners.))
TEC
The agenda…
So what is the larger agenda of a private Jewish school, anyway? And what does an Institutional Advancement office do? Sounds like pure PR work 🙂 Must be a big school!
Similarly, that’s one of the very few things I miss about working at a bank a number of years ago… Every Federal holiday was a bank holiday. And while we were never allowed to be closed for more than 3 days in a row, including weekends, those Friday and Monday holidays came often enough I rarely needed to worry about booking a vacation day.
Q: What would be the primary reasons for sending her there? Lately I’ve had some questions about the influence of sectarian private schools on society at large, as they tend to attract the wealthiest and most influential members of society. I suspect the echoes of their education resound throughout the political sphere.
I haven’t fully formed my thoughts there yet, but it would be interesting to know why your average middle-class family wants their child to go there… other than the obvious “well, I work there” answer 😉
You do know that the PT Cruiser is actually just a Dodge Neon with a different body on it, right? I’ve always thought the Neon was an attractive vehicle, but the service record is one of the worst in existence for a domestic car…
—
Matthew P. Barnson
‘the work there’ factor is part of it
On the school question, part of the issue is simply lifestyle – the girls already go to the Montessori school where Lisa teaches, and only partly because Lisa gets a very small break on tuition. But certainly, the ease of dropping the kids off in the morning, the schedules of vacations, issues like the slew of school closings we’ve been hit with this week – the lifestyle implications are considerable.
If daughter #1 goes to JDS, part of it will be because I work there (though there’s no break on tuition as a staff member.) The school, from the perspective of a parent checking out the program, seems really outstanding, too, and I’m trying to speak as the parent looking for the best education for his child and not the professional pitchman here.
Certainly, there’s a coniderable religious component to the curriculum, and all the students learn Hebrew, but at the same time, the school has access to considerable resources not typically available to public schools or smaller private schools. That’s appealing. The program itself is dual-curriculum: part of the program is done only in Hebrew, but other parts of the curriculum are done exclusively in English.
We’ve done the homework, too, which I don’t know that many parents get the chance or time to do. We visited the public elementary school in our community. It employs a Spanish immersion program for all grades, all classes, which considering the shifting demographics in this part of the county, a little more Spanish fluency makes sense. But the school is older, and not likely to get retro-fit by the county any time soon. A new school opened nearby, and about half the population moved to the new school, so when we toured our neighborhood school, it seemed almost empty. (Another sad note: the heat was working sporadically; the classrooms were warm, but the hallways were all cold. A sign of the problems with upgrading hundreds of older facilities, even in an affluent jurisdiction like MoCo.) Is the school an option? Sure: the immersion program is amazing, its close to the house and there are options for before and after school care. She’d be with neighborhood kids, and the families here are great. But is it the best choice? That’s the rub.
On the larger societal implications – part of me says, I need to do what is right for my children and my family first. That’s selfish, I suppose, but responsible.
On the other hand, even in the few weeks I’ve been with the school, I’ve been overwhelmed with what the school gives back to the community – the larger DC-area Jewish community, and the general community at large. Each grade adopts, as it were, a service project for the year. In an effort to manage the crush of gift-giving tied to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, the Middle School has a program where students collect money they might have received for themselves, and turn it around into some sort of meaningful service organization. And the older students I’ve had a chance to talk to, and learn about, are engaged outside of the school somehow, far more than I remember being at their age. That’s appealing – an environment that nurtures the person the student might be someday.
(Again, I am trying to distance myself here from the PR spin, this is mostly stuff I’ve been just impressed with even in the first few weeks.)
Not sure if my rambling is getting to the answer and I’d be interested in hearing more of your thoughts. The short response: I’ll admit that I am struggling with the notion of embarking on the private school path. Religious or non-sectarian, its a commitment. On the other hand, the public school option might not meet our needs. What balance do I strike? We’ll see.
I’ll talk about the PR question in another reply…
Better eduction
Well, it’s a fact that most private schools, when it comes to turning out good citizens and educated individuals, do it better and faster than most public schools. The public school must cater to the least-common denominator. What a bright student can learn in a month takes an entire semester just so that the unmotivated and dim ones can learn the same things.
I know, because I’ve been there 🙂 I got straight A’s in certain classes because they interested me, and I read the entire coursebook within the first few days of the start of class. Meanwhile, I only slogged along in others because I was bored.
I don’t know what the solution is to close the gap between public and private schools. It is not to dumb down the public schools, surely! And charter schools — at least in my state, and from what I’ve read, elsewhere — seem to principally be a tax-sheltered haven for white families to pull their kids out of integrated schooling with hispanics and blacks. I wish there were an easy solution. Even if there is a hard one, though, would we have the collective will and voting power to pursue it?
I think we’re stuck with half-measures like G.W. Bush’s “No child left behind” program. It’s a concept which had its start in good intentions, but turned into a tortuous, poorly-administered mess that does little to improve the quality of education and does a lot to raise the paperwork associated with public education.
I dunno. I don’t have a clear vision of where things need to go, but I do have a strong but vague sense that we need to improve public education.
Christy, lying on the bed and talking to me about this, suggests that the taxpayers aren’t willing to pay more taxes to put money into education. Thus, the people who have the money and can afford to put their kids into private schools end up paying double because they are both supporting the public school through taxes, and paying for private school in order to get a quality education for their children.
A key feature of private schools is the quality teachers who are reasonably paid. If we could address that issue, it would be a start. But what does it say when we place the value of a first-year teacher at $17,000 a year in some places — just $5,000 above the poverty level — while a college dropout like me can make more than double that doing work in the private sector?
Boy, talk about rambling 🙂
—
Matthew P. Barnson
JDS
For what it’s worth, everyone I know who attended JDS got an excellent education.
— Ben
The Agenda
The agenda of any private school is probably the same – sustainability. How does one advance that agenda? If a sensitive and far-reaching PR program is successful, it builds a great waiting list for admissions, open doors for fundraising, helps recruit great teachers, and so on and so on.
It is a big school, but something I’ve been finding out lately is that even the really smaller schools – 300 students in K-12 programs even – employ communications professionals. Sometimes it’s just to manage advertising programs and open house events, and participate in the development activities. (I get to do those things, too.)
In my case, the school has never had anyone doing the communications work in-house (they’ve contracted the work out to firms on a piece-by-piece basis) so there’s a part of the job that will be making-it-up as I go along, and I can bet that year 2 (the beta version?) will be a lot different from year one.
TEC
Whining Naggers
Tim,
I can write this because I’m in the tribe. You need to be aware of, and not get sucked into, the negative roils perpetrated by the Whining Naggers Who Complain About Everything. Also known to the general public as Jewish Mothers, the Whining Naggers will never be satisfied with your work. EVER. Even if your senior class all ace the college boards, even if your secure a huge grant to finance a new wing, even if you are put on the front page of the Washington Post for your leadership role in redefining K-12 education, they will still find something to complain about.
Individually they are normal people. However, when in groups they morph into a larger whining force with enough collective energy to make even the happy, chirpy robin of springtime commit suicide.
Don’t get sucked into their trap.
That’s so funny you wrote that…
When I sat in on the Siyum ceremonies last week, a mash-up of a religious ceremony and awards show, I got a very funny picture of the days following the first few placements of prime media coverage I can secure for any of the students. I can imagine – and not be far off – a slew of parents politely knocking on my door, asking when their little first-graders pen-pal project will get its own splashy feature in Washingtonian magazine, or why this junior or that sophomore isn’t getting interviewed by Barbara Walters.
Not that I’ll mind, not really, but I am prepping my pat responses…