In Denver, a Jewish day school happily copes with a surge in new students

Students gather in the gym for a Rosh Chodesh celebration at Denver Jewish Day School, an event that now fills the space as enrollment continues to rise. Courtesy of DJDS

(JTA) — This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. Author Drew Kaplan is a student at Denver Jewish Day School.

Denver Jewish Day School’s principal never thought he would spend so much time looking at school furniture catalogs. 

Jeremy Golubcow-Teglasi needed to turn a former workspace into a classroom for a middle school math class and occasional Hebrew classes. Between this and needing to increase the capacity in a few other rooms, he was in the market for new desks, chairs, and tables to serve the 37 new students who have joined DJDS over the past two years. 

Enrollment in DJDS’ upper division, which is middle and high school, is 19% higher than it was two years ago. 

“Space has suddenly become a real constraint,” said Golubcow-Teglasi, who leads the upper school. “When you put 70 more people in a building that normally houses 120, you have to get creative about space.” Currently, the upper division has 189 students, an all-time high.

He and others describe the growth as a reflection of the rise in antisemitism and increase in Jewish identity following the war in Israel, causing many families to seek a larger Jewish community for their children. As a result, enrollment in Jewish schools like DJDS has increased since Oct. 7, following a similar nationwide trend. Now Jewish schools across the country are having to suddenly adapt to surges in enrollment, causing schools like DJDS—where this reporter has been a student for the past 12 years—to hire more teachers, buy more furniture, and adapt their class offerings.

Across the country, more than half of surveyed U.S. schools have seen an increase in students or families considering enrollment since Oct. 7, according to Prizmah, a network of Jewish day schools and yeshivas.

Additionally, 60% of the 72 schools it surveyed last school year, “identified new students who enrolled in Jewish day schools this school year as a result of the change in climate post Oct. 7,” according to a “Trends Update” released in February.

Donna Klein High School in Palm Beach County, Florida, saw an increase of 177 students the year following Oct. 7. Of those students, 35 families said they made the switch due to antisemitism or anti-Zionism.

Similar to Donna Klein, 80% of families joined DJDS since the 2023-24 school year, citing Jewish Identity & Environment as influencing their decision to transfer. Additionally 67% cited school-wide community as a reason, 61% cited Physical Safety, and 53% cited social-emotional safety. These same reasons, according to Golubcow-Teglasi, also contributed to the higher retention rates seen at DJDS. 

Few families cited antisemitism explicitly as a factor for transferring to DJDS, according to Golubcow-Teglasi, who said it was sometimes mentioned as a factor, but he was never entirely sold that Oct. 7 alone is driving DJDS’s enrollment growth. “But I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis.” 

Enrollment has increased in two distinct “surges,” Golubcow-Teglasi said. The first was after the Covid-19 pandemic, and the subsequent school year, when families were drawn to a small, largely in-person school. But that accelerated pattern of enrollment flattened out until the second “surge” hit following the Oct. 7 attacks. 

The school year after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, 21 new students joined the Upper Division. Annabelle Dennis and Hailey Lutz were among the new transfers. 

Dennis, a junior, transferred from a private Catholic school. “I really wanted a smaller school and community,” she said, “the kids were questionable — really just antisemitic.” 

Dennis struggled as many students came up to her and made hateful comments. “People have asked me why I don’t have horns, and people have told me I killed their Lord and Savior, and they can never forgive me,” she said.

The school’s administration “could have done a better job,” Dennis said. She said that regarding most cases of antisemitism, the administration looked the other way, “sometimes it was handled, but most of the time, they did not handle anything.”

Lutz, a senior at DJDS, transferred the school year after Oct. 7 because she was tired of her schoolmates constantly bringing up the situation in Israel and Gaza. As one of the only Jews at her school, she looked to transfer to a school where she could be herself. 

Students at her school “had a lot of questions on what was going on, especially with all the misinformation being spread on social media,” she said. “People weren’t necessarily antisemitic or anti-Jewish, but they were asking questions. She said she felt as if classmates were trying to get her to say that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza or agree with other assertions that Lutz described as “propaganda or misinformation.”

Holden Demain spent his first semester of 11th grade away from DJDS, the school he’s attended since Kindergarten, attending school in Washington, D.C. as part of the U.S. Senate Page Program.

After returning to DJDS in the middle of the 2024-2025 school year, Demain noticed the changes at the school.

“The hallways are damn crowded, which is great,” Demain said. “There is so much more opportunity to create different kinds of clubs.”

Demain leads one such club, Zemirot, where students sing traditional Jewish songs. This year at DJDS, there is also a new baking club, a Hacky Sack club, and a financial literacy club.

Similar to Golubcow-Teglasi, Demain does not fully attribute the surge in enrollment to Oct. 7; he also credits the population growth in Denver and students switching from other Jewish schools in the area.

“I think it’s been really good. There are a bunch of new opportunities, like you can make new friends that you never would have met before,” said Kaitlin Schatz, a junior entering her fifth year at DJDS. Schatz explains how it has been fun to see new students with different backgrounds. 

But at the same time, more students being in the building means that there are space constraints. “We do not have enough gym space,” Golubcow-Teglasi said, to allow both high schoolers and middle schoolers to use the gym during lunch.  There has been so much demand for the Advanced Placement United States History class this year that it is being offered in two different periods, whereas before it ran every other year. Last year, AP European History was also offered in two different periods for the first time.

Jerry Rotenberg, an upper-division Judaics teacher and student council advisor, said that teacher workload has definitely increased. “There’s more work to do — more tests and assignments to grade, and preparations take longer,” Rotenberg noted that it isn’t necessarily an added stress, just more on his plate.

Meanwhile, during particularly busy periods, some classes meet in the hallways. 

“It’s probably the worst place to have a class,” said Hannah Gruenwald, a senior who is taking her yearbook editor class in the DJDS lobby. It makes sense that the two-student class would be put in this situation, Gruenwald says, “but it isn’t conducive to learning. Having a table would be nice.”