Chabad’s Accreditation Book Becomes a School Standard

By COLlive reporter

The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc everywhere to be sure but the responsiveness of Chabad schools has been remarkable.

Since last spring, schools conferenced and strategized, planned and adjusted as new facts emerged. The Merkos Chinuch Office took a leading role in organizing and helping schools across the country be proactive.

Information has been made available to schools as quickly as it is received from Federal or State sources and Jewish day schools in general and Chabad schools in particular followed through. Child Safety has been the first and most important obligation to them, COLlive.com was told.

In California, summer programs were extended into the school year to assure a successful opening. Subsequently, school buildings were obliged to close and learning switched to Zoom and other distance modes. The Merkos Chinuch Office provides assistance and counseling to students in many yeshiva day schools in Los Angeles through a federal Title program and students were quickly transferred to remote programs.

Cheder Chabad in Baltimore, Maryland, has been nimbly responding to possible exposure to the virus by closing selected grades to keep children safe and seamlessly moving them into remote access. Similar stories can be told wherever the is a Chabad school. In Oregon, a Chabad school has been held up as a model of safety for children.

The National Accreditation Board of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch (NABMLIC) played a leadership role in setting appropriate standards for all accredited schools in the US.

Rabbi Nochem Kaplan as a member of a limited commission of the National Council on Private Schools Accreditation worked to create new safety standards for schools.

In fact, a new NABMLIC book of Accreditation Principles and Standards has just been published and the latest safety standards for schools are already included. These very standards are being copied and adapted by other accrediting agencies.

The Rebbe’s responses to questions about receiving vaccines (he advised parents to have their children inoculated during the Polio pandemic) are being disseminated nationwide and parents are being encouraged to heed the advice of medical professionals.

The pandemic is far from over but thus far Chabad school leaders, as most Jewish school professionals, have shown true leadership and deserve to be recognized for it.