Jewish learning flourishes with
Academic Excellence Fund

A parent in a middle-income family with three children attending the Hebrew Academy of Morris County (HAMC) found herself facing the possibility of having to remove her children from HAMC for financial reasons. But then a tuition grant program made all the difference for her family.

“It is totally clear that without the grant, my three children would not have been able to continue at the HAMC,” she explained. “This grant program has lessened the tuition burden of those of us in the financial middle, and without it, a Jewish day school education would be inaccessible.

“How can you put a price on this blessing?” she asked. “This [education] has changed the lives of my entire family. To have missed this due to dollars and cents would have been a profound loss.”

The grant she received was from the HAMC Base Tuition Program, pioneered by the Paula and Jerry Gottesman Family Supporting Foundation and now funded in perpetuity by a major endowment from the MetroWest Day School Campaign. The purpose of the grant program is to cap tuition at affordable levels for middle-income families.

Another component of the campaign is a new, permanent HAMC Academic Excellence Fund, also donated by Paula and Jerry Gottesman. The fund has made possible a variety of innovations at HAMC that have dramatically improved the educational experience of the students.

This year, students are learning biology and earth sciences in a new state-of-the-art science laboratory. Down the hallway, a teacher performs a lesson using web sites on a giant electronic chalkboard, called a “SMART Board.” As the teacher writes on the board, the notes are transmitted automatically to new laptops at each student’s desk.

In an early childhood classroom, a Judaic studies teacher who spent the summer in Boston studying in a Hebrew language immersion program teaches three-year-old pre-school children colors, numbers, and simple phrases in Hebrew. The teacher uses child-friendly pictures to help the students begin to master a second language.

When the final bell rings in the afternoon, middle school students — long accustomed to carrying heavy backpacks filled with books — now pop small CD textbooks in their bags along with their laptops, to work at home. To help them get ahead, some students stay after school in a new Center for Academic Success. In the evenings, the school is abuzz with Community Outreach Programs focused on Jewish holidays, to help involve families in their children’s education and attract new families to the school.

The HAMC Academic Excellence Campaign, coordinated by the Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest NJ, is intended to enhance academic excellence and affordability at MetroWest’s three Jewish day schools: HAMC, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, and the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy/Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School.