The Jewish day school movement associated with Conservative Judaism has shown a steep decline, paralleling the membership losses suffered by the Conservative movement as a whole, reports Forward.com (January 27).
The website reports that the schools, known as the Schechter Day School Network, were long considered the “crown jewel of the Conservative movement.” But since the late 1990s, the schools have experienced a 35 percent drop in enrollment, according to an analysis by Forward. The number of Schechter schools has shrunk to 43—down from 63 in 1998.
Most of the remaining schools are discarding the Schechter label and their denominational identity and have become non-denominational community day schools. One day school specialist said there is a “feedback relationship” between a denomination and its sponsoring schools.
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