Like many nonprofits, Jewish day schools rely on both professional staff and lay leadership in order to run. Throughout the lifecycle of schools, the reliance on these groups of individuals changes and evolves. This has been our experience at Hannah Senesh Community Day School, the K-8 progressive Jewish day school in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where Melissa Kushner serves as Board Chair and Nicole Nash serves as the Head of School. 

Twenty nine years ago, when Senesh was founded, lay leaders and professional staff had to roll up their sleeves to keep the school running. Our founders have shared stories about how, together with teachers, they swept the hallways and served lunches. Today, parents lend their time and professional expertise on more formalized boards and committees. While the roles of professional staff and lay leaders change based on the needs of the school, what remains constant is the need for all parties to work together, in sync, to achieve great outcomes for the entire school community. 

Our school values, which guide us in everything that we do, have been a pillar as we navigate this work. Two values in particular have been the bedrock to building strong bonds:  

  • Openness – Elu v’Elu – אלו ואלו

  • Belonging – Shayachut – שייכות

As an entire community, we challenge ourselves not only to create a culture of openness that understands and welcomes diverse ideas and perspectives, but to go one step beyond that – to create a place of belonging, an institution that honors the dignity and self worth of each person. Ours is a community where everyone is welcomed, understood, and ultimately feels like they belong. 

Bonded by these values and also guided by them, we have been able to engage in difficult work, pushing boundaries and achieving groundbreaking outcomes together. One area in particular has been diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB). Senesh has been engaged in DEIB work since we were founded nearly three decades ago. However, over the past five years, we accelerated this work by forming a diversity committee composed of both professional and lay leaders, formally articulating a diversity statement, and incorporating DEIB as a priority in our strategic roadmap. This work has not been easy, and we have had to intentionally bring people along, listening first and moving slowly—allowing for education, conversation, and dialogue at every level before moving ahead. 

True to Senesh’s spirit and values, every organizational center of our community got to work. At the outset, we collaborated to align our professional and lay leader/parent body to live out the values stated in our Diversity Statement and the goals set forth in our current Strategic Roadmap. The Roadmap, which prioritizes DEIB, served as a lodestar as lay leaders, professional staff, and parents tackled various areas of work.

With this guidepost in mind, our board developed opportunities for engagement and learning at the governance level and created a pipeline for diversified board membership as well as raising funds to support DEIB work. The Educational Leadership team and faculty audited and developed our school curriculum, libraries, and classroom materials through the lens of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity and planned professional learning which included a faculty study group. 

The Advancement Leadership Team committed to key DEIB-related initiatives in our recruitment, fundraising, communications, and community partners and programs. Parents got together to form a self-directed diversity and belonging committee, with the mission of engaging parents from diverse backgrounds and lifting up and celebrating the diversity of our community. 

Throughout these various action plans, lay leaders and professional staff continually checked in, making sure the different responsibilities were aligned to realize the ultimate goal that children and families from diverse backgrounds can see themselves at Senesh.

Some highlights of this work in action is our establishment of an admissions grant opportunity to grow the number of Jews of Color families in our lower school which has increased the number of Jewish Families of Color at Senesh. We also launched a February break multicultural day camp which centers Jews of Color and hired a full-time Director of Community Engagement to continue to grow DEIB-focused programming and to build partnerships with mission-aligned Jewish organizations. 

Looking ahead, we are committed to further realizing the school’s original mission to build an open and inclusive Jewish school in the heart of Brooklyn. We are excited for our programs to grow and evolve, engaging our professional and lay leaders as co-creators of an open, inclusive, and dynamic Jewish community. Keeping our missions and values at the forefront, and embracing the diversity within our community, we will continue to pursue openness and belonging in everything that we do to realize vibrant Jewish futures together.