Jewish Education Center of Cleveland

Personnel Development: Educators services program enriches the skills, Judaic and professional knowledge of community educators through myriad mini courses and on line courses. Intensive on site professional development that fosters professional learning teams. Tuition subsidies and scholarships for college degrees and professional development seminars for professional growth with a new degree, license or certificate. 187 educators received stipends. This program also supports day school educator positions. The agency works with a local professional development committee serving general studies teachers in the Cleveland area affiliated day schools. The committee reviews and approves license applications, individual professional development plans and associate course request to ensure the general studies teachers maintain their Ohio licenses and certificates.

Informal Education: the Retreat Institute creates & implemented 23 retreats and informal education programs in collaboration with local Jewish educational institutions. 2,219 participants (students, educators and families) participated in these experiences. The Adolescent Initiative works with youth professionals from local organization for both professional development, community planning and adolescent development. This program also supports youth educator positions and programming in the community. Israel program grants and financial aid for students for approved educational trips to Israel to participate in youth group programs plus Gift of Israel matching incentive program for eighth grade school trip to Israel for study and college seminary/yeshivah programs. The Israel program funded 200 participants.

Family & Adult Education: Formal and informal education outreach programs which include Hebrew literacy and Jewish identity projects. This program provides grants to 7 adult education providers to enhance their ability to engage adults in lifelong learning. These providers reach hundreds of individuals in a variety of formats and settings. This program also offers support to supplementary schools with a total of 14 community funded educators to fill a variety of educational and programmatic positions in local supplementary schools.

Education Resources: the Curriculum Department serves the educational needs of Cleveland's supplementary schools, day schools, and preschools. The Teacher Center is a hands on materials center where teachers create instructional aids for their classrooms. The Teacher Center serviced over 27 schools, 8 play groups and approximately 1,190 visits from educators. The Ratner Media & Technology Center is relied upon in the educational community as a place to find outstanding resources and expert advice. Congregational enrichment provided 36 grants to 9 congregations schools for enrichment programs.

@Akiva - is vibrant place for Cleveland teens to explore and grow in their devotion to Judaism and Israel while fostering everlasting friendships. From Hebrew and Judaic after school classes, to advocating for Israel through special activities and community service. @Akiva offers unique programming throughout the year. Approximately 1200 students were involved in the various programs, High School Hebrew, On The Road, Israel Now and Icnext.

Shared Services - Provides information technology services to six educational institutions and the Mandel Jewish Community Center. It manages the consortium's data center, over 1616 workstations and laptops, iPads, 3125 Chromebooks, 20 physical servers, 110 virtual servers, 17 backup/vcenter servers, 8 local network attached storage, 250 VPN/Citrix users, 300 Cisco duo users and 10 Cisco voip phone systems, 500 IP phones, 10 camera surveillance systems, 430 Cisco ,Axis and Hanwha cameras through out the consortium of schools and agencies.

Special Education(Segula) - Provides services to students in day schools and supplementary schools and in-service training opportunities to special education teachers in the field. The Segula program served 7 students with special needs.

Early Childhood Education - Focuses on development of senior personnel, professional development/credentialing of teachers. Enhancing Judaic content and creating linkages between early childhood Jewish education and other stages of Jewish education. This program worked with 11 preschools and approximately 150 teachers in the community.

Shin Shin Program - The Cleveland Jewish schools and youth groups benefit from the Israeli emissaries through various educational programs.

Interfaith Engagement- a program to engage interfaith couples and families to enhance their involvement in the Jewish community to comfortably explore, discover and personalize the meaning of Jewish culture and values in the modern world. This year more then 3,751 families were involved in various experiences.

Onward Hebrew -An online Hebrew learning program developed for those desiring to teach Hebrew through Movement, but whose Hebrew is weak. The program specifically teachers Hebrew through Movement's vocabulary and grammatical patterns following the Hebrew Through Movement's acquisitional language approach. There were approximately 59 synagogues involved in the educational programs and approximately 220 educators touched by this program.

Camping Program: Camp incentive grants for students to attend Jewish denominational over night camps around the country. The camping program funded 531 students this year.

Planning & Evaluation: Ensuring accountability and measuring success are central activities of the agency. Initiatives in this area build upon the internal programmatic reflective practice and data gathering that is a regular part of the agency's programs. The JEC's strategic plan calls for increase involvement in Jewish education in three principal ways: by lowering barriers to participation, maximizing gateways and fostering linkages between educational opportunities. Strengthen the quality of Jewish education. Cultivate the capacity of the educational institutions about engagement in Israel. Ensure a high level of accountability of the agency programs.