If you saw flying mortarboards anywhere near Palo Alto’s Kehillah Jewish High School last weekend, there was a good reason: On Sunday, June 11, the school’s first-ever graduating class earned their diplomas, flung their headgear into the wild blue, and are now college-bound.
We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Kehillah’s 22 graduating seniors.
And while we’re at it, we offer the same best wishes to the Class of 2006 at San Francisco’s Jewish Community High School of the Bay (its second graduating class) and Lisa Kempner Hebrew Academy.
Mazel tov to all.
Those young adults are living proof that our local Jewish high schools deliver the kind of rigorous education that lands graduates in the nation’s top universities.
But there is a broader message here for the Jewish community as well: To maintain this level of academic success, our local Jewish high schools require continued coordinated support across the board.
With such new quality institutions as JCHS and Kehillah, Jewish parents in the Bay Area should strongly consider enrolling their children. Federations, foundations and private philanthropists should likewise consider increasing their financial assistance.
This is not a scold. Many of those organizations and individuals have already been providing essential financial and material support for the schools. They clearly understand that a good Jewish education lays the groundwork for future leaders of the Jewish community.
Yet Jewish high schools and day schools too often remain underfunded and underenrolled.
The reasons are many. Even with scholarships and subsidies, tuition and other costs make a Jewish private school unaffordable for many parents. The schools themselves face the same kinds of funding challenges as other nonprofits, which can leave them in the red or dangerously close to it.
For years, leading voices have urged the national Jewish community to make Jewish education priority one. Some have offered expansive proposals, Marshall Plan-like in scope, to make a Jewish education affordable, even free, à la the Birthright Israel program.
We certainly commend that kind of visionary thinking, even if such plans sometimes seem impossibly grand. What’s really important is that the community — locally, regionally and nationally — back up the talk with action.
Everyone seems to agree that Jewish education is, or should be, one of our top priorities. Well then, let’s fund it. A Jewish day school and high school education should be a birthright, too.