Next Steps: The Early Childhood Education Initiative

The Early Childhood Education Initiative team is appreciative of the feedback we received at our recent Community Event, and this new information is helping our strategic and business planning process. We are currently writing our strategic and business plans, and have identified our key strategies:

• Incentivize BA/MA degrees and professional development for individuals in Early Childhood Jewish Education
• Create mechanisms to provide compensation based on degrees and expertise
• Recruit and retain a qualified community cohort of ECJE educators
• Fund Jewish learning opportunities for parents of young Jewish children
• Convey significance of ECJE through community-wide PR initiative
• Engage ECJE sites in ongoing learning and support to achieve best practices
• Increase slots in ECJE for Jewish children, offer incentives and flexible tuition
• Fund and support programs to Jewishly engage families in and out of ECJE sites in the early years of their children’s lives

We will be sharing these plans with our task forces and committees in late summer, and will convene a community event in early fall to share our work with all of you, and others who are interested in Early Childhood Jewish Education. Stay tuned! By Janet Harris, Director of the ECE Initiative