For this issue of the journal we turned to two groups of day school leaders, current and former, to draw from their wisdom and insight into complex issues facing decision-makers and leaders. Each group was presented with one question at a time, and in some questions generated not only responses but dialogue. Over the course of four weeks they responded to four ethical dilemmas, and we are thankful for their thoughtful contributions.
David Finell is Head of School at Rockwern Academy, Cincinnati’s Community Jewish Day School. Dr. Finell was previously at Theodor Herzl Jewish Community Day School (Denver) and the Tehiyah Jewish Community Day School (El Cerrito, CA.), and Summit Middle Charter School (Colorado). David holds both an MA and an Honorary Doctorate in Jewish Education from Hebrew Union College, an MS in Education from the USC at Los Angeles, and a BA in Political Science from the UC at Berkeley.
Gary Levine is a Jewish educator who worked variously as a teacher, activities director, administrator and curriculum developer for more than forty years, during which time he was privileged to learn a great deal from students and colleagues. He holds several academic degrees and a bunch of certifications, but since he can’t hold them all at the same time, he keeps most of them in a drawer in the file cabinet.
Steven Lorch is Senior Educator-in-Residence at Westchester Day School (NY). Dr. Lorch is also Senior Advisor to School Leadership and the founding and immediate past Head of School at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan. In addition, he serves on the faculty of the Day School Leadership Training Institute.
Cheryl Maayan is head of Saul Mirowitz Jewish Community School in St. Louis. She received her BA at Washington University and MAJE at Hebrew Union College. She is both an alumna and a mentor for the Day School Leadership Training Institute. Cheryl is a recipient of the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, JProSTL Visionary Award and Stuart Raskas Outstanding Day School Teacher Award.
Mitch Malkus is Head of School at The Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, MD. Rabbi Malkus previously served as Head of School at The Rabbi Jacob Pressman Academy of Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles.
Moshe Simkovich is an educational consultant in the Chicago area, and teaches Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew Theological College. He was Founding Head of School and Dean of Judaic Studies at Stern Hebrew High School (now Kohelet) in the Philadelphia area, Director of the Shana Bet program at Yeshiva Yesodei HaTorah (Bet Shemesh), Rabbi of Congregation Shaarei Tefilla (Newton, MA), and was the Orthodox advisor at Brandeis University.
Ethical dilemma #1
Your school is shrinking and you need to reduce the size of the faculty. What factors do you weigh in making a decision? If you have experienced this situation, what did you learn from your experience and how would you act if you were to face it again?
David Finell
The issue of having to downsize is, indeed, a reality for far too many of our schools in this day and age. I think that quality of teaching and years of service to the school are certainly among the most important factors for a Head of School to weigh in making such difficult decisions. We certainly want to keep teachers who are outstanding and have demonstrated commitment to the school. But often things are not so clear.
For example, what do we do with the single woman who has been teaching at the school for 35 years and whose teaching, while barely adequate, is no longer that impressive? Nevertheless she is beloved by many influential families and she is dependent on the job financially. How do we cut such a person in a time of retraction?
And what of the young and gifted teacher who has been there only two years but has raised the bar on instruction in the primary grades through the influence of her amazing example? As one of the last hired, is she the first to go?
What have I learned from such experiences? That there aren’t easy or even right answers but we need to, of course, meet with everyone face to face. Give people their dignity. Try to be inclusive in working this out as a staff together to the degree that is possible. And that it is okay to say you are sorry the school finds itself in this impossible situation and that you are sad and upset about it as well.
Steve Lorch
This is a very complex dilemma in which the actions taken before the enrollment decline are at least as important, from an ethical standpoint, as those taken in response to it.
Before
1. Has your Board set aside a fund reserve? ISM (Independent School Management, a management consulting firm based in Wilmington, DE) recommends that schools build up a reserve equal to 20% of their operating budgets, to be spent, as needed, to cover unanticipated budgetary shortfalls in any given year, such as a downturn in enrollment. (This should not be confused with endowment, which is also recommended and which some Jewish day schools have begun building. Endowments are usually set up as permanently restricted funds, which means that they can’t be touched, ever, for any purpose. The reason they exist is to throw off income of about 4% of their principal a year that the school can use to cover normal operating expenses and relieve the need for raising money from other sources, such as tuition or annual fundraising.) If your school has a fund reserve, that should be your first and most ethical recourse – use some or all of the fund reserve to pay teacher salaries that tuition doesn’t cover.
Fund reserves are like Yosef in Bereishit – building up the grain stores during the years of plenty so that Egypt won’t starve during the years of famine.
2. Over the years, how transparent has the school been with the faculty regarding its finances? Has the Head of School or business manager/executive director given an annual report to the faculty – a state of the school presentation that includes financial information as well as other strategic trends? If so, the school is in a position to be able to ask the faculty to partner with it in a crisis. On the other hand, if the school has not routinely shared information about the business side of the school with faculty, approaching them now and asking them to bear the brunt, or share in the burden, of a financial crisis is ethically problematic (and unlikely to work in practice).
3. Employment agreements should be created with an eye toward this eventuality. The industry standard in independent schools is at-will employment, meaning that the school is within its rights to terminate a teacher’s employment at any time and for any reason (other than a discriminatory or arbitrary reason).
It would be unethical to have signed an agreement to employ a teacher for a particular term (a year or even longer) and to have to renege due to an enrollment shortfall or any other extraneous reason while the agreement is still in effect.
During
1.Communicate! Many people have the instinct of sharing good news but withholding bad news. That’s exactly the wrong strategy in this situation. (Again, the practical and the ethical are aligned here.) There are some confidential matters – typically the kind of information contained in the personnel files of individual faculty members – that should never be shared, but any information for which no ethical imperative exists to withhold it should be shared. Keeping colleagues in the dark about an issue that affects them very deeply is hurtful and wrong (and bad strategy). Of course, school leaders need to craft a communication plan very carefully to ensure that the message that’s shared is as confidence- building as possible, and it may take a few days, or even weeks, of non-communication in order to craft the messaging before the information is shared. But the goal should be full and prompt disclosure of troubling news. 2. Collaborate! The Head of School and the board may already have weighed the alternatives and decided that faculty cuts are the least-bad option, or the only one. But others may be able to devise a more creative or better solution. Be open to other ways of either decreasing expenses or increasing revenue that don’t make it necessary for someone to lose his or her job.
For example, would the faculty be willing to consider sharing the pain among everyone rather than forcing one or two colleagues to lose their jobs? Agreeing that everyone (administrators included!) will take an unpaid furlough of a week or two (at a savings of 2-2.5% of annual salary per week of furlough), with the teachers covering each other’s classes without incurring the expense of a substitute teacher, may save the same amount as laying someone off and may potentially be accepted by faculty as a less-bad option. But a solution like this can’t be imposed from above; it needs to be the product of open dialogue and collaborative problem solving.
If your school is unionized, collaboration may look a little different. Rather than inviting all faculty, or faculty volunteers, to brainstorm solutions, it may be necessary to work with union representatives. But the process should be as similar as possible to that of a non-unionized school.
3. The decision. This is actually the only question about this dilemma that was explicitly asked. My view is that, if push comes to shove and a forced choice needs to be made between faculty members, the performance of one teacher relative to the performance of others should not be considered (with one possible, rare exception, which I’ll come to). This is because the school already has policies and procedures in place for removing teachers whose performance falls below an acceptable standard, and using a financial crisis as a pretext for removing a teacher with substandard performance is fundamentally dishonest (in the sense that the school cannot truthfully claim that it was driven solely by budgetary reasons to choose the teacher in question, which is the claim that it would want to make).
Two appropriate considerations come to mind: seniority, and cost. Seniority is self-explanatory because it is widely used and therefore universally understood, and therefore members of the school community will tend to accept the decision as appropriate on its face, and their perception of the school as an ethically motivated institution will not be compromised. Cost might be a relevant factor if the savings needed can be achieved by laying off either one highly salaried employee or two lower salaried employees. An ethical argument can be made, in such a case, for laying off the higher-salaried employee and thereby inflicting harm on one employee rather than two.
The unusual circumstance in which it might be claimed that performance is a relevant factor in deciding whom to lay off is if the decline in enrollment is specifically attributable to one teacher in particular, for example, if the departing families state that they are leaving because they don’t want their children to be taught by the teacher in question. However, even in such a case, I would argue that dismissals for cause should be kept separate and distinct from layoffs for financial reasons. Unless the teacher’s supervisor has a serious, objective, professional concern about the teacher’s performance that would lead the school not to rehire her/him on the grounds of performance, s/he should not be laid off for financial reasons (unless, of course, the neutral criterion for the financial determination also singles out this teacher).
4. Support! If the least-bad alternative turns out to be laying off one or two teachers, the affected teacher(s) should be offered an abundance of emotional, professional, and, if possible, personal support. Find the person within the school whom the teacher will feel most comfortable sharing her/ his distress, anger, frustration, etc. with (it might be the school psychologist, or the Head of School or Principal, or a trusted colleague), and arrange for them to meet as many times, and as frequently, as necessary for the teacher to talk through the decision and process it fully. The school should offer timely and unlimited resources (within reason…) to help the teacher find a different job, or plan for retirement, or transition to any other next step – as glowing a letter of reference as possible within the bounds of honesty, employment or retirement counseling, time off with pay to interview for jobs, etc. During this challenging time, would the teacher benefit from someone looking after her or his children, or not to have to worry about cooking for Shabbat? School leaders could ask a group of teachers, or parents, to help provide this kind of personal support, as well.
After
1. The teacher’s contributions to the school and her/his students should be appropriately celebrated, and the community (colleagues and/or current and former students and parents) should be allowed to grieve her/ his departure (assuming, of course that the teacher is open to this recognition).
2. Even after the teacher leaves the school, s/he should be made to feel like a treasured member of the school community. For example, it goes without saying that s/he should not be taken off the school’s mailing list unless s/he asks to be taken off. Former colleagues should be asked to take responsibility for periodically checking in with her/ him and sharing school news. S/he should continue to receive in vitations – possibly personal invitations – to major school events, including milestone events (in-school bar or bat mitzvahs, graduation) of the students with whom s/he feels close. I apologize for the length of this post. Because of the complexity of the dilemma, it includes many important ethical facets that I felt I needed to address.
Gary Levine
Dr. Lorch has been very thoughtful and detailed in his response, and, while all schools are different, most schools would do well to design variations on his themes. I will only emphasize one or two points, if I may.
- Money helps. Aside from the fact that severance packages will significantly help to soften the blow, even in a school with a system of tenure, the school will want to maintain a balance of staff after downsizing (experienced/young; energetic/solid; male/female; etc.), and we will want then to negotiate exit packages, early retirement, etc.
- Of all the intelligent things that all of the respondents have offered, the most crucial can be summarized as follows: ethical behavior towards our staff in times of crisis cannot be a new policy, but must be the continuation of the ethical behavior with which we have always treated our staff. The good will of our teachers and support staff that we need to draw on now can only be present if we have dealt honestly, openly, ethically with our staff as a definition of who we are and what our school represents.
Cheryl Maayan
Decisions about downsizing are a dreaded part of the job, and one of the reasons people are not lining up to become Heads of School. We weigh issues that are nearly impossible to reconcile. On the one hand, we value human dignity. On the other hand, we will have to publicly identify a person who is not “up to” standards of excellence. On the one hand, we uphold a caring community and treasure relationships, but on the other we have to end those relationships if they are not in the school’s best interest. We know that we have the power to provide a meaningful career, and yet we find ourselves having to let someone go. While we teach our students to be sensitive, caring and kind, we inevitably have to hurt someone. We need to uphold the positive energy of the school, and yet know that this news will bring morale down. We want our faculty to feel safe and part of something important, and yet layoffs make everyone feel vulnerable.
If layoffs are inevitable due to declining enrollment, the essential point of decision is to retain the faculty members who can help attract and retain more students, and enact the school’s strategic priorities. The head’s role boils down to the essence of the job – to lead the school into the future. The ethics behind the decision will never feel right.
When it happens, maintaining the highest level of professionalism possible helps the employee leave with dignity. Being gracious leads to future positive interactions. Our former employees are still part of our students’ lives, and our school is part of their professional journey. We will see them at synagogue, at cocktail parties and in the grocery store. It is important to keep in mind that we will always want to be able to look them in the eye, say hello and even catch up on their lives one day when the pain of parting subsides.
Moshe Simkovich
Thankfully, during the time I was head of a school I was not in a position that called for large cuts in the faculty. That being said, I began my teaching career in a high school that closed its doors the week after I moved to the community (before I began teaching!). The excuse proffered by the board to the dismissed faculty members was that it was important for the school to buy a suddenly available property for its associated grade school. The school needed the salaries of the high school faculty members to cover the buy. So sorry. The real chain of events was hidden from the parental community. Finance trumped loyalty and integrity.
If an aspect of the school’s behavior belies its value to the community, then the school is tampering with its reason for survival. The school must have integrity, must earn the loyalty it needs to survive through tough times. If the school is struggling and must choose a priority, it must honestly face the situation without harming its community – and that means faculty as well as board and parent body. Committed teachers want to understand why their school, and their role in the school, adds value to the community. The understanding provides dignity.
This opening event to my career in Jewish education elucidated the need for dignity. A meaningful perspective on what is valuable gives the school community and its faculty members perspective. For teachers who stay on and are asked to change what they do, this will make the adjustments understandable. For those who do not stay on (for whatever reason), it can guide them about how to present themselves in applying to new positions appropriate to their strengths. And just as important – the school itself becomes a place of dignity, despite the pain and inevitable bad feelings accompanying cutbacks.
Dilemma #2
Your school is in a highly competitive area. One of your teachers wants to supplement his income by teaching for a few hours in a school which competes with yours for students. Do you have the right to allow the teacher that opportunity? Do you have the right to deny the teacher the opportunity lest it reduce your competitiveness? How does a school balance its responsibilities to the institution and to its individual constituent members?
David Finell
In many communities (including in Cincinnati) teachers work in multiple schools in order to make ends meet. If there is a parttime Hebrew teacher at the Jewish community day school who also teaches an afternoon Hebrew class at the nearby competitor Solomon Schecter day school, why is this wrong and who am I to tell him he cannot do it? If I have a math teacher who also teaches summer school and SAT Prep classes at a competitive independent school, why is this a problem?
I have a wonderful marketing director at my school currently who sends her children to the Orthodox day school in town. As long as she is effective in promoting my school (which she is) why should she not be able to send her children to a school which she feels better aligns with her family’s ideology and level of observance? Should she not be able to serve on their board if she is interested? Should she not be able to teach a class there in the afternoon if she so chooses?
I think that we can get into trouble when a person teaches/ tutors his or her own students on a paid basis outside of school. Someone who does this could be construed as having a financial incentive for his students to not do well in his class so that he can subsequently pick up additional money tutoring them. So we stay clear of this kind of thing.
I also think it is a matter of how broadly we define educating our students. Ultimately we are all trying to educate the children in our community to the best of our ability. If there is a good teacher who can lend his or her talents to another school in addition to my school, then more children benefit. And both schools benefit as well from the flow of ideas and best practices that such a teacher can bring to each school. So I actually see benefits from teachers working in “competitive” schools. If ultimately a teacher decides to move fully over to another school at some point, then it is a free country and that is their prerogative.
If such restrictions are needed to maintain a school’s competitive edge, I would imagine that a little deeper down one might find there are actually more substantive issues with which to contend.
Cheryl Maayan
I’ve heard it a thousand times: a school is only as great as its teachers. We hire faculty that are aligned with our unique educational philosophy. Their very employment is designed to help fulfill our mission and grow our school. We pay them a salary and benefits, and provide professional development so that they can best deliver on educational excellence for our students. We have every right to expect that they take on the role of being ambassadors for our school wherever they might find themselves – at a cocktail party, at synagogue, in the grocery store. As part of our professional team, they help work on the school’s strategic priorities. These priorities include increasing retention and enrollment activity.
In my school, taking employment outside of school must be approved by the Head of School. There are instances in which an employee might take employment that would reflect negatively on the school and make it more difficult to deliver on the strategic priorities set forth by the board. Working at a competitor school might fit into this category. In this situation, where working at the other school would hurt the primary employer, it is reasonable to deny the teacher that opportunity.
What makes this difficult is that faculty are underpaid for their important work and often need to seek supplemental income. If put in a position to disallow this particular outside employment, it would be ethical to help the teacher find alternative employment that does not threaten the strategic priorities of the school.
Steve Lorch
For the sake of completeness, I will mention one aspect of this ethical dilemma that others have not yet mentioned. Assuming that the teacher in the dilemma is employed full time, why should he (or she) need to supplement his or her income with additional teaching? Scarcity is a reality for nearly all Jewish day schools, but it shouldn’t be assumed to be a necessary condition, and certainly not as a desirable situation. What would we, the most affluent Jewish community in history, need to do to ensure that every Jewish day school teacher received a comfortable salary (providing the ability to live at a standard of living similar to that of others in the community, within a reasonable commuting distance from the school), and every Jewish day school student could attend at a price that was affordable for his or her family (requiring that the family choose, not between Jewish day school and other essentials or non-negotiables, but between Jewish day school and discretionary or non-essential items)?
As to the question posed in the dilemma, I don’t actually consider this a conflict of interest. (If the dilemma hadn’t specified that the teacher’s outside employment would be limited to “a few hours,” there might have been a conflict. Allowing a teacher to accept so much additional employment that it might reduce the quality of that teacher’s work in my school would be unfair to his students. But a few hours of extra teaching would not ordinarily jeopardize a teacher’s effectiveness.) Because the underpayment of teachers (not only in Jewish day schools) is a well-known, accepted fact, families seeing a teacher in one school take a parttime job in another school will not think ill of the first school for “sharing” a teacher with another school. And it would take a fairly unusual scenario for the teacher’s part-time hours in the other school to be sufficient to drive families from the school in which he teaches full-time to the other school. (Unusual but not impossible: if the tuition in the other school is a fraction of the first, or if the second school is a better ideological fit for the family thinking of transferring their child, it might play a small role in a family’s decision.)
I would feel different if the question were about a key educational administrator or an admissions director because, for many in the community, such a decision would not reflect favorably on the school. In that case, I would actively discourage his or her taking part-time employment in a competitor school. I might even feel different if the teacher in question were a larger-than-life, mythic figure in the school’s culture whom everyone gravitates toward. Ultimately, however, the decision of whether to accept additional employment is the teacher’s or administrator’s. If the choice is to accept the offer despite my urging, my option, as head of school is to decide whether to continue to employ the teacher in my school. I can’t imagine a circumstance in which I would decide not to.
Dilemma #3
You recently found out that a student hosted a party at his home on the weekend at which there was excessive drinking and possibly recreational drug use. Neighbors complained about the noise and the police were summoned. The party and its aftermath was the talk of the town over the weekend. How should the school respond? Is it ethical for the school to take disciplinary action for actions which take place outside of the physical space and the time of school? Is it ethical for the school to not take disciplinary action? Do schools have the right to set guidelines for acceptable behavior outside of school? Should there be a distinction in the school’s response between the student who hosted the party and the attendees who participated wholeheartedly?
Mitch Malkus
Our school has taken the position that we are a 24/7 school and that our community expects that we will be involved when our students are engaged in inappropriate or unlawful behavior outside of school. In issues where there is cyberbullying and use of alcohol outside of school, we have as a school been involved. Parents count on the school and we speak constantly about partnering with families. While the school might not take disciplinary action in each case of outside behavior, we would certainly share and report information that we learn with families. Ethically, we see education as involving the social and emotional dimensions of our students and if a student was using alcohol or drugs we would want to address this for the safety of the student. I also believe that in tight knit communities, what happens outside of school has an impact on the culture of the school and so it is necessary for the school to be involved in these issues.
Cheryl Maayan
The goal of our Jewish school is to create ethical leaders grounded in Jewish values. We use the power that we have within the framework of school time and culture to encourage our students to make responsible decisions that reflect well on their dignity, on their family and on the Jewish community. We recognize that our students have other influences outside of school including American culture, peer pressure, and parental role-modeling. We expect them to press the boundaries that they face, to make mistakes and to learn from them. It is inevitable that students will make damaging mistakes such as this, given their culture. We do feel that it’s our responsibility to respond for two reasons: 1) to help frame the violation of boundaries within a Jewish context for the children, and 2) to protect the public reputation of the school. The response of the school should include a meeting with the students, the Head of School and the Jewish leader of the school to clarify the impact of their behavior on the school. The incident and the “public talk” affect role modeling for other students and the reputation of the school in the greater community. The meeting should acknowledge that we are faced every day with the opportunity to do the wrong thing – and that in our Jewish culture, we are striving to choose, instead, to make ethical, responsible decisions. The school response also calls for a public statement to the community stating that the school does not condone underage drinking or drug use, nor parents allowing underage drinking or drugs in their homes. It is not ethical of the school to share names and punishments of students in a public document. If a student’s behavior continues chronically, to the detriment of the school’s culture of taking responsibility for one’s actions, it is acceptable and ethical for the school to no longer serve that student.
David Finell
While we can all certainly agree that “’it takes a village,” the question is, as usual, really one of degree. My colleagues have so far clearly argued for a very high degree of intersect between the lives of our students in our schools and our students’ lives outside of our schools. However, I am not sure this is, in fact, the case. I think more often our response to such situations is actually more nuanced than we so far seem to be letting on in terms of where the incident falls, as it were, on the implicit spectrum against which we tend to gauge our appropriate level of involvement in such cases.
Looking at the case in hand, for example, what are we really talking about? Let’s draw out the extremes. Is this a lone high school senior at my school who threw the party, but none of the other students who were involved attend my school? Or is this a large group of 6th graders at my school who organized the party on a pretense while the parents were away and bullied all the other kids in the grade to acquiesce?
As things move towards the 6th grade scenario end of the spectrum, we obviously want to see a high level of school involvement because we obviously have a school culture issue that needs to be addressed. When we move towards the impulsive senior who exercised poor judgement in the waning weeks of the school year scenario, I think we would tend to more respect that family’s privacy and not make it a topic for a call home from the Head of School or something to be brought up at morning meeting. So, in short, I know we can all think of situations that went down in our schools where we could not, and did not, say: “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” That clearly would have been an abrogation of our broader responsibility and of the Jewish midot we seek to model. On the other hand, I know we can all similarly think of situations where we had students who made a bad decision and we respected the family’s privacy in dealing with it as a separate matter. I am not in agreement with the apparent presumption of erring on the side of the school’s involvement in what transpires with our students off-campus. I think there is a spectrum and that, in truth, our response to such difficult situations is usually more appropriately nuanced depending on where the incident falls.
Moshe Simkovich
I would add one point to investigate: dismissing or disciplining a student or students when justified often is followed by washing hands of all responsibility for the student. There is fear of his influence on others, on school reputation, and on enrollment. Yet, the follow up at that point is potentially the most important opportunity to impact the student. Even if the student was dead wrong, it does not mean that the student ought to be cut off totally if an educator able to respond to his/her needs is available. It can be the entry point to a new grappling with who the student ought to be. One more factor: Quite likely the student will maintain relationships with classmates. If the student is mishandled beyond dismissal, it will reverberate.
Gary Levine
Many years ago, senior students held just such a get-together as described in this question, a blow-out worthy of North American senior students nearing the successful completion of their high school career. The alcohol flowed; several students became ill from the excess and required medical attention. The extravaganza lasted through the night and into the next morning, all of it under the auspices, if not the supervision, of a number of parents who helped to organize the evening. Some students did not attend; others came and left early; certainly not all overindulged.
The next morning, a few students talked to some of the teachers about the evening. The Headmaster and the General Studies Principal spoke with the students who were there that morning; they consulted with guidance staff and several of the teachers. No doubt, they spoke as well with members of the school’s Executive. In the end, the Headmaster and the GS Principal sent a letter to all the senior students and all their parents, expressing their disappointment that these fine students and their worthy parents would so have missed the central ideas of personal values and the concern for others which was so central to what their Jewish education had been about and asking them to consider what they wanted to take with them as they moved on to the next stage of their educations and their lives.
The reaction was, to say the least, mixed. Many parents, among them Board and Executive members, complained angrily that the administration had overstepped its bounds; that it had insulted the whole of the school community. At least as hurtful, no small number of students sniggered openly at the powerlessness of the people in the front office.
But some parents called and thanked the Headmaster for the letter, for saying what they did not have the courage to say; and some students came in to apologize or to discuss the issue with guidance staff or favorite teachers.
Dilemma #4
You have received a grant for “inclusion” from a foundation and have three options. 1-Make the school handicapped accessible, 2-Hire a learning specialist to provide extra assistance for students who need the support, 3-Create an enrichment program for gifted students. Which option would you fund and why? What factors might influence changing your decision?
Gary Levine
As legend has it, Winston Churchill was once served an elaborate dessert at a restaurant. He looked at it, called the waiter and said: “Take it away; it has no theme.”
There is no generic “school.” Every school, like every other institution, must design its own “theme,” its mission statement, its goals and principles and then strive to serve that theme. No school can do everything. A school whose mission statement calls for it to “provide a complete and comprehensive Jewish education to every Jewish child in the community, regardless of background, interest or ability – an education of the mind, the heart and the soul – that will serve and maximize the individual potential of every student and lead to success and excellence in every class and in every co-curricular program” is lying, foolish, or knows where Bernie Madoff put the money.
It is the first responsibility of the school board to consider and frame its goals and principles, to evaluate and develop them periodically and to build a school that will seek to live up to these goals and principles. It is these goals which must dictate the hiring of staff, the expenditure of resources, the curricular and extra-curricular programs, et al. If a deep connection with Israel is part of what my school stands for, for instance, I must find a way to hire Israeli shlihim, to incorporate Israeli history, current events, political discussion into the dayto- day life of the school. If my school aspires to university prep training on the highest levels, I must consider how to structure my curriculum to serve that need, how best to train students for entrance exams, how to outline the responsibilities of my guidance counselors, how most efficiently to bring in representatives from the universities, how to set up campus visits.
Living up to the demands of my goals and principles must, as well, have its costs. There is a limit of resources, of time and money, and not being able to supply everything, I must first and foremost offer my students and their parents what my board has promised them in its statement of goals and principles.
And, therefore, when the inclusion grant is offered, my school has priorities already established to consider where that money may be best spent. If it is our goal to offer an education to every Jewish child who wishes one, it is unthinkable that students not be admitted because we cannot provide access to those with disabilities. If, on the other hand, we are committed to offering the opportunity for academic success to every student, we may need to use the grant for extra help for our weaker students.
I realize that, stated here as generalities, this may all sound glib and over-simple. Of course, all schools have a number of important goals that they are trying to achieve, and balancing these goals is a constant challenge in the allocation of resources. But the important point here is that a competent school must have in operation the vision of goals and principles by which to measure its priorities when opportunities, and sometimes misfortunes, arise.
In a school properly established, whatever “ethical choice” there may be when the offer of the grant is received, was already initially addressed before the first teacher was hired to work in the classroom
Mitch Malkus
I read Gary’s post on this question and agree with his general approach that a school’s mission, vision, and values as well as its strategic plan need to guide decision-making on what type of inclusion program to develop with grant money. I think this would be the case with any and all decisions – that they reflect a school’s mission and strategic priorities.
As the question is posed the ethical dilemma potentially involved should one group of students in need of support receive priority by virtue of the category they are in as opposed to what is the most pressing identified need in the school community. Generally in the Jewish day school field and Jewish education more broadly, we can certainly say that students with physical disabilities have fewer choices and opportunities. We might also say that students with learning disabilities have some but limited options for formal Jewish education as the severity of their disability increases. Yet, it seems difficult to argue that any one group should have pride of place or be privileged in the creation of a specific program. Rather, I think beyond the ethical dimension, if in fact one exists in this case, coming to a decision about how to best use the grant should be based on a needs assessment both internally at the school and more broadly in the community to which the school belongs. While yes, any program that is developed must fit into the mission and values of the school, beyond that a decision on the specific type of program should be guided by the needs of the school and the larger community.
Steve Lorch
It would be very unusual to receive a foundation grant for a particular purpose, such as inclusion, without a program description and budget already having been specified. (If you know of such a foundation, can you make an introduction, please?) And if the program that attracted the grant was already described and the budget set, the school leadership would already know which of the emphases was to be funded. Therefore, the situation as stated is unlikely to produce an ethical dilemma.
With a small modification, however, the hypothetical ethical issue can and does arise. Let’s say that the foundation in question put out a Request for Proposal with the three options presented in the prompt, and let’s further stipulate that the foundation will entertain only one proposal, for one of the three options, from any school. An ethical issue might arise regarding which option to apply for.
Before I respond to the dilemma, I want to point out a couple of differences between the original scenario and the new one I constructed: first, if the grant has already been made, then the funding is already assured. Deciding which priority to fund has immediate practical implications: one of the projects will be implemented, while the other two won’t – unless a different funder, or funding cycle, comes along. If the school is first applying for funding, however, no funding is assured. Therefore, the choice between program options is less stark, and creates less of a forced choice. Applying for one purpose doesn’t guarantee that that purpose will be funded, nor does it deny funding for either of the other purposes, because they might not have received funding even if they had been applied for.
Second, a consideration under the new scenario that wasn’t present in the original case is an assessment of which type of program will be most appealing to the foundation: does the foundation have a history of supporting one of these priorities to a greater extent than the other two? That might militate in favor of applying for that option. Can the school make a stronger case in its application that it has the capacity and track record relative to one of the options that would inspire the foundation’s confidence in its ability to make effective use of the funding? This is a pragmatic consideration, not an ethical one. The ethically compelling choice may be the wrong option, if it produces a weaker proposal and isn’t funded at all.
In Gary’s post, he pointed to the school’s mission and priorities as a key to making an ethical choice; Mitch introduced community need as an additional ethical consideration. I’d like to suggest a third: the school’s ability to meet the learning needs of the students who would be served by the program. In many of our schools, this is already a criterion in admissions decisions, whether explicitly or implicitly: we examine the fit between the applicant’s learning profile and the school’s capacity to adapt its program to students with that constellation of skills, needs, and history of response to the supports that the school can offer. While there is an ethical imperative in the abstract to afford every Jewish child a high-quality, intensive Jewish education, I submit that there is an even greater obligation not to create a mismatch between a particular child with a particular learning profile and a school whose particular set of supports predicts a very low likelihood of success for that child.
The grant would undoubtedly enable the school to increase its capacity to offer supports that meet the needs of particular children. However, a grant for a limited amount will make possible only a limited expansion of the school’s support services and structures. Therefore, the ethical choice for a school, all other things being equal, is to try to create the best possible match between the enhanced capacity it will achieve with added funds and the learning profiles of actual children who are either already in the school and would be served better, or of new students whose parents would want to enroll them if the additional supports provided by the funding gave them confidence that their children’s needs would be well met.