by NYC Private Schools on October 13, 2009
This past week, ten principals of Jewish schools from across the U.S. and including one from Canada, all gathered in Brooklyn to take part in the Menachem Education Foundation’s Principal Leadership Program.
The CrownHeights.info site carried this story about the Leadership Program:
“For the very first time, a group of Yeshiva principals are being formally trained to become more effective leaders by world class trainers and coaches,” comments participant Rabbi Avrohom Bergstein, principal of Cheder Lubavitch in Morristown, NJ. “While much professional development has been available in the past, this course imparts both the rationale behind and the practice of expertly efficient mechanisms that propel a school to succeed through the development of its leader.”
The Menachem Education Foundation developed the Principal Leadership Program to give Jewish school principals “tools to become brilliant leaders who will inspire and transform generations of students, parents and teachers,” says executive director of the Menachem Education Foundation, Rabbi Zalman Shneur. The program, with its interactive methods of group exercises and discussions, “will create a new standard in Jewish educational leadership,” he predicts.
With a driving focus on a more globally diverse culture, especially in NYC where so many religions, cultures and peoples intermingle on a daily basis, the need to increase the standards of culture education is clear.
As growing focus is being placed on improving American education both nationally and locally, “Now is our moment,” Shneur says, “to utilize the opportunity… to work with the Jewish community to provide the best possible education for our children.”
The Foundation’s programs focus on workforce and professional development within the Jewish education system by providing training and placement for those aspiring to become teachers and educational leaders.
by NYC Private Schools on September 14, 2009
Private School choice is one of the most personal things a parent and child can choose for themselves. How they will be educated, what they will be taught, by whom and in what way are life changing process that affect how children think and learn. For those parents and students who choose a religious private school, that choice has even more long term factors involved in beliefs. A controversy being discussed centers around one Hollywood-backed private school and whether or not it is teaching religion to those that didn’t sign up for it. NY Daily News carried the story of the Will Smith/Jada Pinkett-Smith Private School and it’s Scientology ties.
No matter how hard they try, Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett-Smith can’t dodge chatter that the private elementary school they run outside of Los Angeles is an outpost for Scientology thinking.
The New Village Leadership Academy, which Tinseltown stars paid $1 million for, opened for its second year this week, facing the “secret Scientologist” rumors yet again.
And for good reason.
Earlier this month Pinkett-Smith fired the previous director who had problems with the Study Tech curriculum devised by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The new director, Piano Foster, completed a Scientology Basic Study Manual course in 2005 and her name appears on an official Scientology list.
Keep in mind that the main focus of dissent among many groups right now is that the school is registered as nonsectarian, or non-religious.
Rumors and gossip don’t necessarily mean truth, however. The school’s founders support a variety of charitable and religious programs that have nothing to do with scientology.
The Smith’s charitable foundation gave $122,500 in 2008 to groups affiliated with the Church of Scientology. But they also donated $1.3 million to a variety of religious, civic and arts groups that year, including a Los Angeles mosque.
Pinkett-Smith told Ebony magazine earlier this year that NVLA was not affiliated with Scientology.
In the end, parents who choose private school should do so with full disclosure of any religious teachings.
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