Good Wednesday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the Biden administration’s avoidance of Israel-related issues in the rollout of its national strategy to combat antisemitism, and feature an op-ed from Rabbi Carrie Vogel. Also in this newsletter: Mel Brooks, Sandra Fox and Jeff Poulos. We’ll start with a new Jewish early childhood education initiative, EarlyJ, launched in the San Francisco Bay Area.
With the goal of transforming the reach and quality of Jewish early childhood education (ECE) across the San Francisco Bay Area, The Rodan Family Foundation and The Koum Family Foundation have teamed up: the two foundations recently announced EarlyJ, a new joint philanthropic venture aimed at transforming the reach and quality of Jewish ECE across the Bay Area, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Esther Kustanowitz.
The foundations have seeded this work, which launched in April, with a combined $12 million over five years, in addition to $2 million raised for early East Bay pilot projects, some of which are still running. The initiative seeks additional funding partners to contribute to a $13.5 million balance, to fully fund this work over the next five years.
“We see this as a national, very urgent and pressing need. Every community is facing some of these challenges in one way or another,” Elana Rodan Schuldt, president and CEO of The Rodan Family Foundation, told eJP. Transforming early childhood education, she added, means tackling several problems at once: enrollment, teacher compensation and retention, accessibility and family engagement, and testing the holistic model “within one hyper-local community to create change” in the early childhood field.
Yana Kalika, president of The Koum Family Foundation, stressed the partnership’s collaborative approach to remaking the field, adding that the foundation has invested “a lot of time to meet with funders and communities” about projects that have worked and the challenges they’ve faced. “It’s going to take us all coming together” to try new approaches and “thoughtfully investing in the work to transform Jewish ECE, but it can be done.”
Consultant, researcher and former Brandeis professor Mark Rosen told eJP that such substantial funding would be best allocated to creating new locations that are close to where parents live, and hiring trained staff at competitive salaries.
“If you can use philanthropic dollars to increase salaries to attract staff and also lower tuition costs to attract families, you have the potential to really enhance enrollment. That’s where the philanthropic dollars will make the biggest difference,” Rosen said.
Read the full story here.
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