Solomon Schechter Day School Association

This year, more than 1,8000 teens will participate in Conservative Movement programs in Israel with Ramah, Solomon Schechter, and USY. Below is our list of the 32 participating schools who are sending a total of 1113 students to Israel.

Also take a look at our Photos from Israel Trips. Read the rest of this post »

Congratulations and yishar koah to the middle school students of the Jacob Pressman Academy (Los Angeles) who participated in the California Mathematics League. The 6th grade placed 4th in the LA city competition and the 8th grade who placed 3rd in the LA city competition. A huge yishar koah to Benjamin B., who ranked 1st  in Los Angeles and placed 6th overall in the entire state for 6th grade.

 
The California Math League is part of the national Math League and is dedicated to bringing challenging mathematics materials to students. League specialties include math contests, books, and computer software designed to stimulate interest and confidence in mathematics for students from the 4th grade through high school. Over 1 million students participate in Math League contests each year. Contest questions are designed to cover a range of mathematical knowledge for each grade level. Questions on the contests never require any mathematics beyond the grade level tested. This year over 137 private and public schools participated in the California competition.
 

News from Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union

Athletic Fields Renovation Set to Begin

We are excited to announce that the final stage in the Upper School renovation is about to begin with the upgrade of our athletic fields! The plan includes renovating the existing soccer and softball fields and adding a new running track. The improvements to the existing fields will include re-grading them to improve drainage and bringing them to regulation size so that more home games can be played at the school instead of traveling to local town fields to “host” a home game.

The new fields and track will significantly enhance the athletic experience of Schechter’s student athletes. The Physical Education program will also benefit from the improvements. In addition to raising the quality of the athletic facilities, the safety of the athletes and spectators will be greatly enhanced with the addition of a fence between the fields and the adjoining property that operates next door. The improvements will also include the addition of an underground sprinkler system and a water fountain. A small weight room will also be added indoors.

When student, families and staff at Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union heard about the devastation in Chile following an earthquake a few short weeks ago, they knew they had to help. After all, the school has a close connection to Chile – For the past six years SSDSEU has held a 10th grade annual exchange program with the Instituto Hebreo in Santiago, Chile.

Immediately following the earthquake, SSDSEU Chilean Exchange program coordinator Gail Shapiro, reached out to Instituto Hebreo and the surrounding Jewish community. “Thankfully no one in the community that we know has suffered any physical harm and there was minimal structural damage to their homes and school,” said Shapiro in an e-mail to the SSDSEU community. “Nonetheless, as a school we wanted to help the greater Chilean community.”

Read the rest of this post »

Pressman Academy is in the news for its Hebrew immersion program. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

It’s not easy for a teacher to communicate in an entirely foreign language, especially to pre-schoolers. But that is what happens in an extraordinary experiment in Hebrew-language immersion launched seven years ago at the Jacob Pressman Academy, a Conservative day school in Los Angeles. Children entering the school between the ages of two and five have the option of spending half their day in classrooms where only Hebrew is spoken.

The Pressman program is based on a body of educational research suggesting that languages are not taught but acquired. Rather than subjecting students to drills and rote memorization, let them absorb a second language the same way they learn their mother tongue—by hearing and speaking. A second body of research focuses on the ways that developing brains create neural pathways. For children under seven, it emerges, second languages are stored in the mind just as the mother tongue is.

Read the whole article on Jewish Ideas Daily

Members of Schechter’s eighth-grade class of 2009 hold the tallit at last spring’s special needs b’nai mitzvah in Nahariya.

As reported in the Jewish Standard newspaper:

On the last day of September, more than 300 students and faculty in grades three to eight at Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County walked laps around the New Milford school’s new outdoor sports facility to benefit special-needs bar and bat mitzvah celebrants in Nahariya. Read the rest of this post »

New building site of the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan.
Expected opening September 2010.

This year, Manhattan’s only Conservative Jewish Day School turns 13 and is preparing to inhabit its brand new (permanent) building! This facility on Manhattan’s Upper West Side will support and reflect the innovative, meaningful and joyous child-centered Jewish education that takes place inside. After construction delays pushed back the timetable, the new campus is now expected to open in September 2010.

Address of the new site: 805 Columbus Ave, Manhattan Read the rest of this post »

Toronto, ON

USDS Receives $4 Million Gift in the name of Miriam and Larry Robbins to Support and Expand its Campuses and Continue its Delivery of Excellence in Conservative Jewish Education and Development of 21st Century Learners

United Synagogue Day School (USDS) is the recipient of a generous $4 million gift from Larry Robbins to honour the blessed memory of Miriam Robbins, his late wife. The gift will be allocated by the USDS Board of Directors across several initiatives including an Endowment Fund, key capital projects, and the continued expansion of the school’s presence on the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Jewish Community Campus in Vaughan, where classes will begin in September 2009.

Larry Robbins, a long-time supporter of Jewish education, feels a special affinity for USDS as his grandchildren and grandnephews attend USDS, with two having recently graduated. Read the rest of this post »

Krieger Schechter Day School is going green and Kitah Zayin is leading the way! One of the criteria for becoming certified as a Maryland “Green School” is a habitat restoration project and the KSDS 7th graders have taken on the challenge.

Last spring, at the end of a week-long camping experience at the Pearlstone Center where they learned about environmentalism from a Jewish perspective, the students decided that they wanted to create a butterfly garden on the school grounds. They took the first step on September 4th, when they spread 10 cubic yards of mulch on a 30 X 30 area behind the “sport court” at the edge of the parking lot.

With help from faculty members and the 4th grade class, the 7th graders laid down cardboard rescued from the dumpster and then shoveled, schlepped, and raked to cover the entire area with mulch. By mid-October, just in time for Chol haMoed Sukkot, the site should be ready for planting.

To attract butterflies, the garden will feature flowering plants for nectar, such as black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and sedum. Butterflies also need the right plants for their caterpillars to feed on, so the garden will include plants such as milkweed, turtlehead and Dutchman’s pipe vines. The students have done research to determine which plants the butterflies need and to find varieties that are native species for this area.

Some of the shrubs and perennials will be planted this fall with more to come in the spring. Some Lower School students at Schechter are helping by growing black-eyed Susans from seeds in their classrooms over the winter and others are raising butterfly caterpillars to be released in the spring.

The design for the butterfly garden will be chosen from students’ submissions. When completed, the garden will include pathways and benches, so that it can be used as an outdoor classroom space or a spot for tefillah.

CHICAGO — More than $1.5 million will go to 15 Jewish day schools that benefit from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago’s Jewish Day School Guaranty Trust Fund — a 20-fold increase in the two years since JUF launched its major innovation in supplemental day-school funding.

The annual distribution is 43 percent higher than last year’s payment from the Trust Fund, which was created to guarantee a permanent source of cash the schools can rely on every year. Since the breakthrough funding initiative was announced in early 2006, the Trust Fund’s endowment has skyrocketed to nearly $27.5 million in commitments. Read the rest of this post »