The Cranford campus of Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, acquired by the school in 1979, will be closing at the end of this academic year, with the students offered admission at the school’s West Orange campus. Photo courtesy SSDSEU
April 17, 2008
Distress but no real surprise greeted the announcement last week that Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union will be closing its lower school building in Cranford at the end of this school year.
The school, for students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, will be consolidated with Schechter’s lower school campus in West Orange.
According to parents and staff members, falling enrollment at the Union County site and an escalating deficit made it clear that change was inevitable.
The administration and board of trustees of the Conservative Jewish day school voted on the matter on April 9.
A statement issued the following day said shifting demographics in Union County and the surrounding area over the past 10 years meant enrollment declined from 141 students in the 1998-99 school year to a projected 53 for 2008-09.
The statement continued: “After substantial effort over a period of years, and targeted interventions and due diligence during many months, the professional and lay leadership of SSDSEU made the determination that the Cranford Lower School building will not reopen for students beginning with the 2008-09 school year.”
Total enrollment at Schechter’s three campuses this year is 750, but only about 78 of those are at the Cranford school. As of yet, no children had been enrolled in its pre-K and kindergarten classes for next year. An offer made a few months ago of free tuition for students in their first year in any grade at the school drew no takers.
Schechter president Mark Lederman said the decision to close the Orange Avenue school and sell the building was not easy.
“Consolidation of our lower school campuses will allow for continuing financial sustainability as well as educational viability of our school,” he said. “We will continue to attract students from all communities in the region as we have done throughout our history.”
News of the closing came the same week that the Solomon Schechter Day School of Suffolk County in Long Island announced it would close in June after 26 years of operation. Officials there also cited declining enrollment. Last year, Metropolitan Schechter High School in Teaneck also closed after four years of operation. (For statement by national Conservative movement, see sidebar below.)
Lederman told NJ Jewish News that he had received responses from parents that “cross the whole spectrum, from angry or disappointed to looking forward to having their children going to West Orange — and being with more children in each class.” While he expects that some parents will balk at the idea of sending their children a further distance to school, others had already been scouting the West Orange campus.
He and his wife live in Somerset County, and their three children all traveled an hour by bus to attend the Cranford school. Their eldest is now in college, but the other two still travel that far to West Orange, with one at the upper school and one at the middle school.
“They’ve never known any other way, and they’re fine with it. It’s time to nap or do homework or socialize,” Lederman said.
He is hoping that other parents from the Cranford campus will opt to bus their children to West Orange. Plans aren’t in place, but the administration would be doing its best to provide affordable transportation for all the transferring children.
“The more children involved, the easier it will be to make it relatively economical,” he said.
As for retaining faculty from the Cranford school, including Moshe Rudin, the principal appointed just last September, Lederman said that too would depend on enrollment.
“Even if all the children from Cranford go to West Orange, that campus won’t be over capacity, but the more who decide to go there, the more staff from the school will be absorbed into the West Orange staff,” he said.
All the students who planned to enroll at Cranford for 2008-09 have been offered placement at the West Orange lower school.
“Although we have reached a significant decision regarding use of our property, our commitment to current and future students in Union County has not been diminished,” said Dr. Joyce Raynor, Schechter’s head of school, in the statement.
Raynor said she appreciated the support received from the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey, the Jewish Community Center of Central New Jersey, local synagogues, “and the hard work of lay leaders and professionals who reached out to prospective families to help increase enrollment. We are proud of the dedication shown by so many families, faculty, and students through the years, and appreciate the difficulties that accompany this type of transition.”
The JCC option
Stanley Stone, executive vice president of the Central federation, expressed sharp disappointment about the decision. The school informed the federation leadership in March that there was very real concern that the Cranford campus might have to close. In response, the leadership went into immediate action, working with parents to find ways to buy time for the school.
The federation offered a loan of $100,000, to be pooled with $150,000 from the parents, to hold down the school’s growing deficit. In conjunction with the JCC of Central NJ, it began exploring the possibility of housing the school at the Martine Avenue premises it shares with the JCC.
“It would also have had the possible advantage of a potential feed of students from the JCC preschool,” he said.
Before the federation and JCC were able to put a final offer on the table, Schechter officials shut down that option.
“We would have wished for a different outcome,” Stone said. “We hoped that if we could have one more year, with a concerted effort it might be possible to recruit more students. But having been called in at the 11th-and-a-half hour, candidly, we knew this might happen.”
Stone said that he understood the decision from a financial point of view and the dwindling numbers. “But from a selfish point of view, this is a huge loss,” he said. “This is a cadre of families that we don’t want to lose — people who are dedicated to their Jewish identity. This takes away from the richness and the wonderful range of Jewish life available in the area. It was one of the attractions — that you had access to a non-Orthodox Jewish day school as well as an Orthodox one.”
He added, “But we would never ever shut the door on the possibility of reestablishing the school’s presence in this area.”
Lederman also mentioned that possibility. The JCC proposal “was and is a great idea,” he said. “But it requires closer examination, and there is the question of permits and funding, and just how many students would come there. There was just no way it could be arranged before this coming September, and we had to take action. But with enough support, that might be a possibility in the future. How wonderful that would be if we could re-grow the school in Union County.”
Schechter parents in the Central community had been involved in various efforts to market the school and find ways to increase enrollment. A number of them expressed their frustration that those efforts were cut short by the decision to close the school, but none of those interviewed mentioned withdrawing their children from Schechter.
Joanie and Don Rosenthal of Westfield have had both their sons at the Cranford school. Their eldest, Lee, is already busing to the upper school, where he is in ninth grade, and now their younger son, Dean, a fourth-grader, will be taking the bus to West Orange.
“This is really sad and we’re concerned about the impact that the closing might have on our Jewish community,” said Joanie Rosenthal, “but we know that the West Orange school provides the same wonderfully warm, individualized attention that the Cranford school offered. I just wish that more people knew about it. I think if they knew what an amazing education Schechter offers, more would send their kids there, regardless of their level of Jewish observance.”
An ‘enriched setting’
The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the parent organization of the Solomon Schechter Day Schools, issued a statement on the consolidation of the Cranford and West Orange campuses. An excerpt:
By combining campuses, adding classes, and therefore keeping class sizes small, students and teachers from both campuses will have a greater opportunity for an enhanced learning environment, the chance to learn in a more enriched setting and to socialize with a larger group of peers, and the opportunity to participate in a broader range of extracurricular programs.
The Cranford Lower School building is considerably older than the West Orange facility and it is expensive to heat and maintain. Maintenance and building funds now will be directed toward the upkeep of only one lower school campus, providing the West Orange lower school campus with more opportunities for its students and community. The eventual sale of the Cranford building is likely to ensure the school’s financial robustness for years to come.
We are proud of the education the children enjoy at every Solomon Schechter day school in North America. Each school is committed to providing its students with an excellent, dynamic education in both secular and Jewish subject matter. We are particularly eager to see the benefits that will come from consolidating these two campuses.
An ‘emotional thing’
Donna Oshri, marketing director for Schechter and a parent herself of a first-grader at the Cranford campus, said there was an additional sadness about closing the building on Orange Avenue.
“It was the first building the school owned, as opposed to renting,” she said. “It’s a very emotional thing.” She will be driving her daughter to the West Orange campus from their home in Springfield.
The school, the first K-12 Schechter-affiliated school in the country, opened at the Conservative synagogue Congregation Beth Shalom in Union in September 1965. Seven years later, the fifth through eighth grades moved to the YM-YWHA of Union County in Union while grades K-four stayed at Beth Shalom. The first graduating class, in 1977, had nine students.
The entire school moved into what is now the Cranford campus in 1979. The West Orange lower school building was purchased in 1985.
In September 1991 the upper school (grades six-12) moved from Cranford to the school’s third campus, the newly constructed Eric F. Ross Upper School Building in West Orange.
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