hiring

The ECE Teacher Crisis

Due to the pandemic, Jewish early childhood education has found itself in a crisis. Jewish schools, struggling to find teachers, are now in an impossible situation. The school directors are trapped between the needs of the teachers they do have, and the constraints put in place by administrators. Unfortunately, at this stage the issue is much larger than the individuals struggling to work around it.

Early childhood education finds itself in an antiquated, patriarchal system that views ECE as “women’s” work. Acknowledged or not, early childhood educators are an essential part of our communities. Maddeningly, preschool teaching continues to be conflated with daycare or babysitting functions. The ECE profession is perceived in many quarters as a part-time job that "any housewife” can do to stay busy and out of the home. This diminishes preschool teachers by denying their worth as professional educators and insulting the profession to which they have dedicated their lives. There are too many administrators who summarily dismiss the higher education and essential classroom experience of early childhood educators and appear most concerned with the continuation of a system that delivers cheap labor to do a complex and exhausting job. There seems to be a pernicious economic incentive to undermining the dignity of preschool teachers.

This situation has always been intolerable for teachers, but it is more urgent now than ever to call for reform. The ECE profession has changed and modernized over the last fifty years. ECE teachers are resourceful, informed, and highly educated professionals. They work long hours, constantly learning new methods and finding ways to make the classroom experience more engaging, effective, and developmentally beneficial. The changing currents in our social mores have found a growing number of teachers in single-income households. They need to support themselves and this is almost impossible on an ECE teacher’s salary. This is often compounded by the lack of full-time employment prospects afforded to teachers of other grades. The situation has given rise to grinding economic hardship for too many teachers. Despite this, teachers continued to show up for decades. To the horror of school directors, this is changing rapidly.

While we might pin responsibility for the sharp decline in the number of ECE teachers on embarrassingly low salaries, or Covid, or the rise of Gen-Z, or any one of a hundred reasons, directors and administrators should be asking this one question, “Why would anyone contract in the short term to become an underpaid, under-resourced, disrespected ECE professional, with no long-term prospects?” Any motivated college graduate with a teaching credential can find work as a full-time teacher with substantial benefits at any other grade level, or as an employee in countless other fields.

I will reiterate that the directors I meet are doing their best with limited resources, but there is an urgent need for them to link arms and find a solution, quickly.

The fix is not going to be easy and Jewish organizations need to lead the charge.  Teachers, directors, and administrators must work together to change the perception of the field within communities, who often regard early childhood educators as babysitters. Equally important, administrators must shift their priorities from rallying the community around a building fund to championing teacher pay initiatives that maintain a well-motivated and properly resourced professional ECE teacher body. If they can do that and offer long-term full-time employment, perhaps enthusiastic and dedicated teachers will return to the classrooms.

Teachers may not be large, shiny, expensive new monuments to the current administration or board, but without them, the real foundations of our Jewish schools will continue to crumble, and the ones who will pay the price have not yet gone on to kindergarten.

Leora Lazarus
Independent Jewish Education Consultant
San Diego CA

December 2021

Hiring Help for a New Lay Leader

In January of 2021, our preschool director of many years informed us that she was retiring at the end of that school year. As vice president of education, I was responsible for finding a new director.

When the Director gave notice of her retirement, the Education group decided to explore unifying our religious school (currently without a director) and our preschool under one umbrella.

Tricia Ginis, Executive Director, Early Childhood Educators of Reform Judaism, was a tremendous help. She took me through the pros and cons of such an effort. She put me in contact with relevant people to call. She provided job descriptions and other helpful documents. She even helped me craft a suitable job description

When that recruiting effort fell short, and we decided to search and hire a preschool director, Tricia was once again there to help. 

I do not know what I would have done without Tricia’s knowledgeable, kind, and unflagging support. In the true spirit of sacred partnership, Tricia guided me through not one, but two searches.

All’s well that ends well. We hired a topnotch director for our newly-branded school, Tree of Life Children’s Center at Temple Beth Israel.  

To you, the readers, as you begin a search for an ECE Director, make Tricia Ginis your first call. To Tricia, Todah Rabah!

Laura Zuckerman
Executive Committee Member
Temple Beth Israel, Pomona CA