A Jewish day school in the suburbs of Boston has announced that it will close at the end of the 2025-26 academic year.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that MetroWest Jewish Day School in Framingham, Massachusetts, has only about 20 students enrolled in pre-K through eighth grade.
“Despite extensive and sustained efforts by our Board, school leadership, faculty, staff, and committed community members to identify a viable path forward, we have concluded that our model of highly individualized Jewish day school education is no longer sustainable," said board chair Steven Finn and head of school Brian Cohen.
MetroWest Jewish Day opened in 2003. According to social media posts, graduating eighth grade classes are typically between five and 10 students.
“It’s a well-respected school,” Cohen said. “But in the end, if there’s not a demand for the product, the quality of the product doesn’t necessarily matter, because you don’t have customers wishing to participate.”
The closure follows a spate of recent closures of small Conservative or pluralistic Jewish day schools across the country, including in New Jersey, New York City and Arizona.
Prizmah, a nonprofit network supporting Jewish schools, said it believed interest in day school enrollment had risen in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. But Cohen said there had been no “surge” at MetroWest, which already suffered during the Covid era.
Now, MetroWest’s families must find other schools for next year. The school says founders Steven and Renée Finn “have generously committed to providing tuition scholarship support for current students who continue their Jewish day school education through eighth grade.”
Where the students might land is an open question. The Boston area is home to 13 other day schools, according to Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the city’s Jewish federation. MetroWest is about 15 miles from its most similar alternative, another pluralistic primary school called Jewish Community Day School of Boston.
