Jewish day school enrollment has climbed across North America, reversing decades of decline, according to a new study. But the region that includes California has seen by far the smallest gains anywhere in the United States or Canada, raising questions about whether that recovery is reaching the Bay Area.
The study from Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, a network of some 300 Jewish day schools and yeshivas, shows that overall enrollment rose 7.5% between the 2021-22 and 2025-26 school years, adding 7,000 students for a total of 101,000.
Broken down by region, though, the growth is uneven: the Southeast, driven largely by Florida, grew 13%; the Southwest grew 10%; the Midwest, 6%; the Northeast, 5%. The Western region grew just 0.2%, adding only 31 students over the same period. The study excluded haredi schools.
A Prizmah spokesperson said the group could not release granular or aggregate data on the 11 day schools in Northern California included in its study. However, J. collected and analyzed enrollment data from the past decade provided by the state Department of Education and supplemented that with figures volunteered by the region’s K-8 and high schools.
The data tells a complicated story, showing that some schools appear to be growing while others are contracting. Across the board, there have been two major enrollment spikes, coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic and the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
Enrollment at two schools, Oakland Hebrew Day School and Contra Costa Jewish Day School, both K-8, is up more than 20% compared with a decade ago. Three K-8 schools, South Peninsula Hebrew Day School, Yavneh Day School in Los Gatos and the Shalom School in Sacramento, are substantially smaller. The rest are at about the same level, meaning that the spikes tied to the pandemic and then Oct. 7 were momentary.
Peg Sandel, former head of school at Brandeis Marin and CEO of the NorCal Jewish Day Schools collaborative, which convenes heads of schools for joint marketing and fundraising, said the regional data is cause for optimism.
“To me, it shows consistency, it shows resilience,” Sandel said.
She said several factors put pressure on enrollment here, including tuition and demographics.
Tuition has climbed by at least 50% across the region in the past 10 to 15 years, she said, and the Bay Area is a highly fluid region, with people moving in and out constantly, especially families with kids in elementary and middle school.
In addition, the Bay Area’s overall population has stagnated, while, for example, Florida, which saw the Prizmah report’s most significant spike, has seen an influx of new residents, including many Jews.
The affordability issue isn’t unique to the Bay Area. Communities from New York to Toronto have launched initiatives to subsidize Jewish day school tuition: UJA-Federation of New York committed $15 million over three years to a new tuition fund, Cleveland’s Mandel Foundation pledged $90 million to an affordability effort, and similar programs have emerged in Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta and Toronto.
The Bay Area has yet to adopt a comparable communitywide program, leaving families to navigate tuition assistance school by school.
Modern Orthodox families make up a small share of the Bay Area’s Jewish community, and Oakland Hebrew Day School’s student body reflects that. However, the K-8 school’s substantial and continued growth may have less to do with denomination than with location.
After Oct. 7, a spike in antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents at Oakland public schools left many Jewish parents feeling that their children were no longer safe in the district, according to Tamar Sandel, Oakland Hebrew Day School’s admissions director, who is unrelated to Peg Sandel.
“I definitely heard some of it came from a concern about non-Jewish schools, and a lot of it came from a positive desire for their children to be raised as proud Jews,” Tamar Sandel said. “So not just to be avoiding the bad, but also to really be seen and welcomed for who they are.”
She noted that many of the families that have joined the school come from a range of denominations and aren’t necessarily members of a synagogue.
Brandeis Marin, a K-8 school in San Rafael, marked its largest enrollment in the past decade during the 2021-22 school year, when it became an attractive option for parents as one of the first schools to reopen for in-person classes during the pandemic.
That bump didn’t last. Enrollment dropped 20% the following school year, and the school is expected to have roughly the same number of students this fall as it did at the start of the 2015-16 school year, according to Pamela Welner, the school’s enrollment director.
Some of the pandemic-era families have remained, according to Welner — a small but meaningful win in a field where retention is hard-won.
“That’s always very satisfying,” she said. “This is one of the biggest hurdles in marketing a Jewish day school: [Parents] have preconceived notions about what a Jewish day school might be. And then they get here and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’ve got amazing opportunities.’” In the end, she said, parents “have to take that leap of faith.”
The Brandeis School of San Francisco, one of the largest K-8 day schools in the Bay Area, reached an enrollment low point in 2020 but has since climbed back up to nearly 380 students.
Angela Dalfen, the school’s admissions director, credits the recovery in part to a new degree of transparency the school began offering about the diversity of its student body. Publishing information such as the share of families who are interfaith or culturally Jewish but not observant “helped a wider range of prospective parents picture themselves at Brandeis,” Dalfen said.
Dalfen was among the enrollment directors at three schools who said that appealing to a diverse pool of prospective students — particularly through positive word-of-mouth from current families — has proven effective.
The region’s Jewish day schools are now getting some outside help, at least with marketing.
In 2025, NorCal Jewish Day Schools received a grant from the Israeli government to fund marketing research for Bay Area K-8 day schools. Peg Sandel said comprehensive findings will be shared with member schools in September.
Welner said early insights from the research have already proven useful.
“That was very helpful because imagine Jewish day schools of our size: How many of us have dedicated marketing professionals? We’re all wearing six different hats,” she said. “Hopefully our partnership with them isn’t done.”