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• February 12 – Kabbalat Shabbat (K-3), 8:30 am Strear Family Gymnasium
• February 15 – No School, Presidents’ Day
• February 16 – Little Shop of Physics Program K-12
• February 17 – LS Math Night has been postponed – new date TBD
• February 18 – 2nd Grade Parent Breakfast, 8:00 am Strear Family Gymnasium
• February 23 – PTO Garbanzo Restaurant Night
• February 25 – Kabbalat Shabbat (K-5), 8:30 am Strear Family Gymnasium

Please note that the Purim Basketball Tournament scheduled for February 28^th
has been postponed.  A new date will be announced soon. 

 

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Important Announcement About the Name of Our School

This past Tuesday morning the Board of Trustees voted on a new school name to better position this great school in our growing, vibrant Jewish community.

 

When Theodore Herzl Jewish Day School and Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy merged in 1999 and joined on one campus in 2002, the name Herzl/RMHA emerged as a compromise. Since that time, our institution has been called by at least six different names. When ACIS, our accrediting body, conducted their seven-year review of our school in January of 2009, they concluded that our name is confusing and that it actually hinders our goal to unite the school as a K-12 continuum. This conclusion was written up in our re-accreditation report as a “major recommendation” that our school must address within one year. 

 

Since we were about to begin work on a new strategic plan, we decided to include the issue of the name as part of the strategic planning process. We were well positioned to deal with this issue because Rose Community Foundation generously funded our strategic planning process, which included the hiring of marketing and branding consultants and the development of a marketing plan. Many board members, faculty, staff, and community members helped us with this effort. The Strategic Plan was approved at a meeting of the Board of Trustees on November 10, 2009 and included a recommendation to change the name of the school.  

 

Following this meeting a Naming Committee was established made up of lay leaders, school administrators, and our marketing and branding consultants. We set out to find a name that would be clear, communicable and descriptive of who we are and what we do.

 

We believe the growth and continued strength of the school is based, in part, upon reaching out to a community that doesn’t necessarily know us. The 2007 Jewish population study indicates that:

Ø      Only 20 percent of Jews living in Denver were born here

Ø      Almost half of the Jews under age 40 have lived here less than 10 years

Ø      One third of Jews ages 25-30 have moved here in the past five years

 

Based on many hours of discussions, a broad based survey of all school constituencies and much analysis, we are very excited to announce that the Board of Trustees approved the following name to take us into the future:

 

Denver Jewish Day School

 

The school colors will be Red and Black and the mascot will remain the Tiger.

 

Our new name has all the characteristics of a great name:

Ø      It is clear and communicable

Ø      It describes where we are located – Denver

Ø      It says who we are – Jewish people

Ø      It identifies what we are – a day school

 

We will spend the next six months positioning the school to implement the new name effective July 1, 2010 for the 2010-11 school year. We recognize there will be some expense associated with implementation. Under no circumstances will we divert funds necessary to achieve our mission, and in particular from teachers, the classrooms or our programs to make this name change occur. The complete roll-out will take several months. A full change of all signage and systems will be completed when funding is in hand.

 

We look forward to your continued partnership while we move forward in a strong, positive way with our unique K-12 school model. Our new name will serve as a launch pad for the school to reintroduce and re-energize the school in our Jewish community and for that we are most excited.

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