Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Philadelphia Day School Offers Buyouts to Half Its Teachers

A suburban Philadelphia Jewish day school that closed down its teachers union has offered early retirement packages to more than half its faculty members.

The Perelman Jewish Day School, a K-5 school affiliated with the Conservative movement’s Schechter Network, offered buyouts to 27 of its approximately 50 teachers, the Jewish Exponent reported. Thirteen teachers accepted the packages, which were determined based on years of service and proximity to retirement age.

Last spring, the school board announced that it would no longer recognize its longstanding teachers union, which was affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. In response, the union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, but it was dismissed because, the NLRB said, the school is a religious institution and not under its jurisdiction.

According to the Exponent, it was not clear what role, if any, the labor dispute played in Perelman’s decision to offer retirement packages.

The school is one of several Schechter schools to close down its teachers union in recent years. Last fall, Dennis Walsh, the NLRB’s Philadelphia regional director, told JTA that while not all religious institutions are automatically exempt from the National Labor Relations Act, many are, adding that there is a complicated set of criteria that the national agency is “in the process of reconsidering.”

Tracey Spector, the head of Perelman’s board, told the Exponent, “Not having a union in place at our school has given us more flexibility to recognize teacher excellence, collaborate with teachers, assign teachers to the most appropriate classrooms and is allowing us to recruit the most talented new teachers for our school.”

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.