Video Lessons for Leaders: How Ida Crown Achieves the Impossible: Faculty Satisfaction with Compensation

Video Interview of Rabbi Dr. Leonard Matanky, Dean, Ida Crown Jewish Academy, Skokie, IL

The Benchmarking for Good Faculty Climate Research, which surveyed nearly 1,000 faculty members across 16 diverse day schools, reveals that the majority of Jewish day school faculty members feel their compensation is not competitive. However, Ida Crown Jewish Academy in the Chicago area is an exception, with faculty expressing notably higher satisfaction with their compensation. Dr. Harry Bloom of Benchmarking for Good met with Dean Leonard Matanky to understand Ida Crown's approach to achieving such success, aiming to provide other school leaders with actionable strategies and tactics for their institutions.

Video Lessons for Leaders: Becoming an Employer of Choice by Excelling at Open Communication

Video "How To" Conversation with Rabbi Adam Englander

Benchmarking for Good research among nearly 1000 day school faculty members indicates that the factor that correlates most strongly with being an employer of choice is excelling at open communication. No school does it better than Hebrew Academy of Long Beach which is led by Rabbi Adam Englander. In this brief video, Rabbi Englander shares his proven success strategies -- formal and informal-- so that your school can benefit from his guidance. Just click on the image to connect with this video program.

Please contact Dr. Harry Bloom at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org to learn how to access our free research grants, just as Rabbi Englander did.

The Vital Importance of Faculty Alignment with School Mission

By Dr. Harry Bloom, Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good, Inc.

Benchmarking for Good’s research among over 800 Jewish day school faculty members in 14 diverse day schools reveals the importance of Faculty being aligned with the school’s Mission. It turns out that this has important implications for school leaders desiring for their school to be “an employer of choice” for faculty.

WHAT EXACTLY DOES “ALIGNMENT” MEAN?

Alignment with Mission means that the faculty members understand the school’s Mission –in essence the “Why” of the school—and agree with it and work individually and in concert with fellow staff members, school families, and the community to support the implementation of its tenets.

SO, EXACTLY HOW ALIGNED WITH SCHOOL MISSION ARE JEWISH DAY SCHOOL FACULTY MEMBERS?

Our 14 school survey results indicate a wide variation among schools relative to the percentage of faculty who strongly align with their school’s Mission.

WHY DOES THE DEGREE OF ALIGNMENT WITH MISSION MATTER?

You might well be asking: How important is this alignment? Or, more pointedly, how important is this alignment relative to faculty members being strong advocates for their school?  The answer is that it is very important. The correlation between a faculty’s degree of alignment with their school’s Mission and their propensity to recommend the school as an employer is 83 percent --which is a very high degree of correlation (strength of correlation is measured by how close the correlation percentage is to 100%). In contrast the correlation percentage between factors such “I like my job” or “I like my work environment” or “I am proud of my school” and a willingness to recommend that a friend or family member work at their school have a correlation coefficient of about 70 percent.

IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOOL LEADERS

There are a number of important implications from these findings for day school leaders.

1. It is important for schools to ensure their Mission statements, and the intentions behind them, are understood by faculty, including prospective new faculty members, and that they feel they can be aligned with them.

2. This would include non-Jewish faculty members who might find alignment with a Jewish school’s Mission a bit more challenging. And yet, veteran, successful school leaders like Rabbi Samuel J. Levine have experienced many examples of non-Jewish faculty members who totally embrace their Jewish day school’s Mission and exemplify this support in their interactions with students and other constituencies.

3. It is helpful for school leaders to discuss with faculty, and even role play, what Mission alignment might look like in a classroom or communal school setting.

4. It is vital for school leaders to periodically conduct confidential faculty climate research that includes an assessment of the degree of faculty alignment with school Mission—as well as the extent to which faculty believe their school is an employer of choice.

5. In instances where a faculty’s perceived alignment with school Mission is lower than desirable, open, safe conversations should be conducted to understand why and to discuss ways to increase alignment.

LEVERAGING FACULTY RESEARCH AND BENCHMARKING GRANT OPPORTUNITIES WITH BENCHMARKING FOR GOOD

If you would like to discuss the possibility of securing a no cost Benchmarking for Good grant that will allow you to conduct research that enables you to understand how your school stacks up in terms of faculty alignment with Mission and as a faculty employer of choice, please contact Dr. Harry Bloom at harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org

#faculty culture  #school Mission  #employer of choice  #faculty