It’s hard to imagine a time when the phrase “Back-to-School” elicited as much angst and debate as it has this summer. Schools are still in the process of finalizing their plans for the start of the school year, with major uncertainty ahead. Families, daycares, and schools throughout Massachusetts are balancing the physical safety of students, teachers, and staff with the social, emotional, and learning needs of our community’s children, all in the context of dire budget constraints.

Given JCRC’s role connecting the organized Jewish community with public leadership and resources, we’ve found ourselves on the receiving end of urgent questions from many members of our community: “Is there government funding for PPE and other COVID safety measures?” “What resources are available to camps, daycares, preschools and schools to deal with the safety costs associated with COVID?”

From the early days of  the pandemic, we have brought Jewish leadership to the table where critical decisions are being made, and we’ve been in constant communication with our elected officials about myriad COVID-related issues. This is a moment in which we’ve doubled-down on our organizational purpose; to discern our community’s values, interests and priorities, and to work together – along with our civic and interfaith partners – to address our collective needs.

So, we reached out to our legislative partners to ensure that students across the Greater Boston community have access to a safe learning environment, and that schools have the support they need during this unprecedented moment. We advocated to Governor Baker and his administration to allocate the necessary funds to all public and private schools and daycares, enabling them to access resources they will need to comply with the required safety measures. And we are meeting our responsibility to provide updated information to individual schools and communities, overwhelmed by the urgent need to locate and access these resources. Click here for our page of information on COVID safety and funding from the state.

We are also supporting the public schools of Greater Boston to meet the unique requirements of remote learning. Our Greater Boston Jewish Coalition for Literacy (GBJCL) is mobilizing and growing our cohort of volunteers to offer individualized attention to students,  an especially rare commodity this year. Many of our volunteers have already been tutoring students remotely throughout the spring and summer, taking advantage of the flexibility that tutoring via Zoom provides. Our volunteers have risen to this moment, providing crucial support to students and partnering with teachers to be a resource in the classroom.  And to their delight, they are finding that not only have they adapted to the strange new reality of connecting through screens, but that the connections with their students have actually flourished. In the words of Andy Koppel, a GBJCL tutor at the Winship School in Brighton:

 “The collaborative reading experience is remarkably effective. The students attend the sessions faithfully, and love the dedicated reading time…This has been an eye-opening and exciting experience, especially enhanced by the students’ positive attitudes and flexibility in dealing with this unprecedented and unanticipated immersion in remote learning.   

We are staying in close communication with all of the school districts in which we work, to learn about their evolving needs – and look forward to deploying our tutors who are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to reconnect with their young friends.

JCRC is committed to ensuring that all students in the Commonwealth have the resources to learn safely and effectively during this incredibly difficult time, and that the schools in our community have the funding they need to do so. We will continue to be a resource for the community to access information about COVID from our legislative partners. We invite you to join our tutoring community this fall.

Shabbat Shalom,

Jeremy