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By Dr. Harry Bloom, Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good
The world is obsessed with climate change. Some people are concerned about global warming, others about the severity of the hurricane season. But there is another kind of climate change that may actually have more impact on Jewish life than these other kinds. Three coincidental factors have the potential to combine into a tsunami of trouble for Jewish day schools unless they are addressed.
First, the likely retirement flood that American Jewish day schools can expect due to the fact that the significant majority of teachers have been working in the field for many years.
Second, the relative unhappiness of newer faculty members compared to their more senior colleagues.
Third, the deep unhappiness the vast majority of faculty members have with their compensation– both its competitiveness and with how it is administered. This unhappiness weakens the advocacy of current teachers to potential new teachers who might consider the field.
Considered as a whole, these concerns could rise to the level of crisis unless addressed thoughtfully and urgently by the relevant national and regional organizations that support Jewish day schools and the day school boards of directors who do so locally.
Recognizing the importance of motivated and qualified faculty to the vitality of Jewish day schools, our nonprofit organization, Benchmarking for Good, conducted faculty climate research during 2024 in 15 diverse Jewish day schools located in 11 states with over 1,000 faculty members. The resulting data are sobering and represent a call to action.
Here are some highlights:
1.Day school faculty is long tenured and massive retirements are to be expected: Our research indicates that two-thirds of current faculty have worked in the educational field more than 11 years and nearly half have done so for more than 15 years. Additional data from the National Association of Independent Schools’ (NAIS) DASL database suggests over 20% of faculty have more than 20 years of experience. While it is positive that students get the benefit of lots of experience, in the not too distant future, the system will need to deal with a significant wave of retirements. And, this will occur in an employment environment where fewer and fewer college graduates are choosing teaching as their profession. The NAIS recently reports that whereas five decades ago one in five college degrees were in education, today the figure is just 4%.
2.Teachers with 4-10 years of experience are significantly less satisfied with their jobs than their more senior peers. These mid-tenure faculty members represent the future of the profession and their relative dissatisfaction is a cause of concern because it could lead to unwanted attrition.
Attrition rates in the schools we surveyed averaged 13% but was above 20% in the weakest 1/3 of schools.
3.Jewish day school faculty are unhappy with the competitiveness of their compensation and about how it is set.
While compensation is not the most important employment criterion for faculty members—respect from supervisors and a collegial work environment are more important to them—2/3 of faculty indicate their salary level is very important to them. Only half of the faculty we surveyed are satisfied with the competitiveness of their salary. Certainly, the amount of pay is part of the issue—in some cases, faculty believe competing schools pay more. But written comments suggest that many Jewish day school faculty understand that funds to pay them are limited but feel the way the available pool of salary funds are administered is unfair.
In most schools salary administration works as follows. Top performers whose retention is of the utmost concern to administrators are given above average raises. Other faculty who choose to negotiate come next in the pecking order and generally tend to get more than the average raise. Those faculty members who choose not to negotiate divide what is left. This system is rife with inequity and perceived unfairness. Even teachers who are unsure whether other schools would pay them more feel their school is unfairly paying others more. This hurts morale. The following quote from a survey respondent illustrates the point eloquently.
““Although the school may offer a competitive salary to some employees, there is a lack of equity in that each employee needs to fend for themselves and to push to make sure they earn what they are worth.”
What Needs to Change?
So, what is needed to ensure Jewish day schools are adequately staffed with qualified teachers in the future? Taking stock of and managing school climate!
First, school leaders need to take a hard look at the steps they are taking to retain teachers. This begins with taking the trouble to gather real data via survey research about what makes their school a destination of choice for faculty.
Next, they need to understand how well faculty members believe their school is performing on those factors. Anecdotal feelings about how things are going is not sufficient. Then they need to acknowledge areas of weakness and take steps to act on them.
Finally, administrators need to recognize that the system of salary administration in our schools is inequitable and breeds a feeling of lack of unfairness for a large percentage of the faculty. Compensation is never the driving factor for teachers but if they are unhappy about other things, negative feelings about how they are compensated could be enough to tip them into retirement or leaving. The answer will not be easy to implement but ultimately is right because it is both equitable and pragmatic.
It starts with transparent standards being set and communicated relative to what doing a good teaching job means. Then consideration needs to be given to the salary value of years of experience and advanced degrees, and also to the fact that certain specialized skills warrant higher salaries. This should all be publicly communicated and when it is, it will help clear the air, as part of the larger climate solution noted above.
Net net, climate does matter – and while the climate outdoors is important, we cannot lose sight of the faculty climate in our schools. If we take the trouble to do so now, our schools will be employers of choice for faculty in the decades to come.
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