On Tuesday the kindergartners and first-graders at Madison Jewish Community Day School will celebrate the traditional holiday of Purim, and the public is invited -- not just because Purim is a festive, joyous event, but because the school wants people to know it's here.
"We're very tiny but we're very strong," said Meisha Leibson, the school's Jewish studies teacher, who seamlessly interweaves Hebrew and English during lessons for the school's nine students. "We have very supportive parents."
Across the Madison area, families who send their children to religiously affiliated schools are proving faithful in more ways than one: Enrollments are mostly on track for the 2009-10 school year. Still, the current economic crisis is likely prompting parents to make some extra calculations before putting down a deposit on next year's private-school tuition, said Dave Retzlaff, the principal and seventh-eighth-grade teacher at Our Redeemer Lutheran School.
"For us (the economy) hasn't had a huge impact," Retzlaff said. "You'd probably see it more in families who are having to think it through a little bit more than they would have in the past. It might have been a little more automatic before."
Current students already have re-enrolled, and applications for any remaining spots at Our Redeemer usually peak in the summer, said Retzlaff, "so that's probably when we'll see if there's a bigger impact or not." Still, in a less jittery economic climate, "for us our goal would be to grow."
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