Becoming the Employer of Choice: A Year-End Action Plan for Jewish Day School Heads

Harry Bloom
Jun 1
5 min read

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

The Staff climate surveys are in and the building is about to empty. The next ten weeks are the only uninterrupted window you will get to act on what your faculty just told you — before the same cycle begins again in August. Here is where the data says to spend it.

It is June. Your teachers are counting down days, your administrators are closing out budgets, and somewhere in your inbox sits a climate survey report you have been meaning to read closely. Here is the uncomfortable truth about that report: the window to act on it is almost entirely the summer. Once faculty return in August, the year carries you — and the same frustrations that drove your best people to quietly update their résumés this spring will still be waiting for them.

So before the doors close, it is worth asking what, exactly, makes a teacher choose to stay at — or leave — a school. We asked 2,100 educators precisely that: how important thirteen different attributes are to their choice of an employer. The answers point to a short, concrete to-do list for the weeks ahead.

The headline is one most Heads will find clarifying, and a few will find inconvenient.

What your faculty actually weigh. Mean importance on a 1–5 scale. The six attributes staff value most are all relational; the four they value least are the development perks schools spend the most money promoting.

The things that keep your best teachers are mostly free — and almost entirely within your control. Depending on how you have been leading, that is either very good news or a very pointed challenge.

Notice what sits at the top: being respected and supported by a supervisor (4.76), a collegial work environment (4.72), and being treated with respect by students. Salary lands seventh — important to nearly everyone, but not the lever Heads so often reach for first. And notice what sits at the bottom: mentoring, professional development, and career growth, the very things that fill your recruiting brochures. The rest of this note turns that ranking into four things to do before the year ends.

ACTION 01

Audit your supervisors before you touch the salary scale

The single most important attribute to your staff is how their supervisor treats them. That is not a budget line — it is a leadership behavior, and it is uneven across your building in ways your climate data can already show you. Some division heads and department chairs are quietly retaining people; others are quietly losing them.

Do this now: Pull each supervisor’s climate sub-scores and sit down with them before they leave for the summer. The supervisor who scored low on “appreciation” or “realistic expectations” needs coaching in July, not a quiet word in October once the damage is repeating.

This costs you almost nothing and addresses the thing your faculty rank first. If you make one investment this summer, make it in the people who manage your people.

ACTION 02

Stop spreading development thin — aim it

Mentoring, PD, and career growth rank lowest on average — which tempts a cost-conscious Head to trim them. That would be a mistake. Those low averages hide intense, concentrated demand. The staff who crave development are specific and identifiable, and they are often the people you most want to keep.

Who is hungry for growth. Deviation from the staff-wide average. Assistant Teachers run hot across every attribute, and most of all on the developmental ones at the bottom of the chart.

Assistant Teachers rate expert mentoring a full 0.55 points above classroom teachers and professional development 0.41 points higher — differences that are statistically significant [p < .001] . The same hunger appears among staff who teach across both General and Judaic Studies, who rate mentoring, PD, and career growth significantly higher than single-track colleagues [p < .001] — a reasonable response to a genuinely harder job.

Do this now: Redesign next year’s professional development as tiered, not uniform: a structured mentoring track for new, assistant, and dual-curriculum teachers, and a different, lighter-touch offering for veterans who have told you they do not need it. Pair every first-year and dual-curriculum hire with a named mentor before opening day — not in the third week of September.

ACTION 03

Get veteran pay right — quietly, and now

Salary is the great equalizer of this survey. It is the only attribute on which roles do not significantly differ and the only one that does not differ by curricular track. Everyone wants fair pay about equally. But its importance is not flat across a career — it climbs steadily with experience.

What shifts as careers mature. The pull of mentoring and career growth fades with experience, while the importance of fair pay — and of being respected by students — rises.

Salary importance rises from 4.37 among first-year educators to 4.59 among those with fifteen-plus years. Your most experienced teachers — the ones whose departure is hardest and costliest to absorb — are precisely the ones for whom compensation has become non-negotiable.

Do this now: Pressure-test your veteran salary bands against your real competitors over the summer, while you have the time and before contract season forces a rushed decision. A raise will not, by itself, make you an employer of choice — but quietly falling behind market will cost you the people you can least afford to lose.

ACTION 04

Write a stay case for each career stage

Read the three findings together and a strategy appears. Early-career staff are sold on the promise of growth; veterans are held by fair pay and daily respect; everyone, at every stage, is anchored by the quality of their supervisor and the collegiality around them. A retention plan that treats all faculty identically will overspend on some and underserve others.

Early-career staff buy the promise of growth. Veterans buy fair pay and daily respect. The same school has to make both cases — to the right people, before they decide on their own.

Do this now: For every staff member you would be sorry to lose, write a single line answering: why would this person choose us again next year? If the honest answer is “I’m not sure,” you have found your summer priority — and you still have time to change the answer.

Before the year ends: a Head’s checklist

❑ Review every supervisor’s climate sub-scores and schedule a coaching conversation with anyone who scored low — this month.

❑ Redesign PD into a new-teacher track and a veteran track instead of one program for all.

❑ Assign a named mentor to every first-year and dual-curriculum hire, confirmed before opening day.

❑ Benchmark veteran salary bands against real competitors over the summer.

❑ Write a one-line “stay case” for each staff member you would hate to lose; act on the blanks.

❑ Close the loop: tell faculty what the survey said and what you are changing. Being heard is itself a retention act.

The faculty who fill out a climate survey are, in effect, telling you how to keep them. The cost of acting is mostly attention and intention; the cost of waiting is paid in resignation letters you will read in the fall. You have about ten weeks. Spend them on what your people said matters most.

How Benchmarking for Good Can Help

Benchmarking for Good offers no cost Climate survey research grants to schools whose leaders are committed to excellence. Contact harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org to discuss your school's eligibility for a Fall/Winter 2026 no cost research grant.

About this analysis. Based on 2,100 responses to the Benchmarking for Good 2026 Staff Climate Survey. Staff rated thirteen employer attributes on a five-point importance scale (1 = Very Unimportant, 5 = Very Important).