Our Atlanta Jewish day schools continue to exhibit tremendous resilience and innovative capacity this school year. All of our day schools have opened either fully in-person or in a hybrid model of partly online and partly in-person learning. They are doing a remarkable job balancing the needs of teachers, students, and parents at a challenging time for all.
After worrisome projections last spring of potential down enrollment this school year, enrollment is up in almost all of our day schools as parents have sought a dependable, high quality educational experience in the midst of the pandemic’s uncertainties.
For example, one school reported: “As things kept getting worse with COVID and it looked like public schools were not going to be back in person, we saw an influx of Jewish families who were disappointed in the virtual learning offered. These families knew that they could trust us for both in-person and virtual to teach their children.”
Getting the schools ready to receive these new students and to operate in the COVID environment was not without great expense. Fortunately, the schools received PPP funds and a grant from Federation’s COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund to offset the increased cost of additional staffing, building adaptations, increased cleaning, PPE, and many other costs associated with safe operations.
We feel good when we hear comments like this one from a new day school parent: “Ok, I can’t help it! I just have to tell you how insanely happy our daughter is this year already. She literally cannot wait to come to school every day, and when I pick her up, she is just going a mile a minute, telling me all about her day and how much fun she had. She absolutely adores her teachers, and so do we. They have just been so above and beyond in every way already.”
