Hello Yavneh Families,
On behalf of the Board of Trustees, I want to say thank you to Arnnon and the Executive Committee; Adam Dorsay, Rebecca Dishotsky, Seth Silverstein, and Dena Acevedo for their dedication and service to Yavneh. We appreciate all they have done for Yavneh and I am very pleased that they will all be continuing on the board as Trustees for the 2020-2021 school year. I also thank Steve Dick, Lew Wolff, and Jeff Salowe who are finishing their terms, for all their work on the Board to benefit Yavneh and our students and look forward to their continued sage advice, involvement, and support of the school.
After having served the past two years as a Trustee on the Yavneh board, I am excited to begin my first term as President of the Board of Yavneh Day School. I have spent most of my adult life as either a board member or employee of educational and Jewish non-profit organizations, including most recently serving on the boards of Congregation Beth David and Wornick Day School as well as working as a math teacher and Principal of Kehillah Jewish High School. I have also raised three children, including one with severe learning challenges, and this year I am the proud grandparent of a student in Gan at Yavneh!
It is my pleasure to introduce two new members of the board, Debra Eskinazi Stockdale and Jonathan Katz. Both Debra and Jon are parents in the school with a wealth of experience within the non-profit world and working on boards. They bring excellent skills to the board and I look forward to their valuable insights, expertise, and support.
I am pleased to introduce the Board for the 2020 – 2021 school year:
President: Alison Ruebusch
Vice Presidents:
Sarah Munson
Rabbi Shoshana Ohriner
Treasurer: Howard Solovei
Secretary & Parliamentarian: Dena Acevedo
Immediate Past President: Arnnon Geshuri
Trustees:
Rebecca Dishotsky
Adam Dorsay
Orly Friedman
David Gaertner
Jonathan Katz
Ran Metz
Yuval Minkowski
Joe Schwartz
Seth Silverstein
Debra Eskinazi Stockdale
I hope you will join me in welcoming our newest board members. Information will be available soon about upcoming opportunities to get to know each other.
In my role at Kehillah, I quickly came to realize how special Yavneh is through my interactions with Yavneh graduates. Their love of learning, their academic achievements, and their character and humanity all shone through from the first time I met them as 8th graders during their shadow visits. I am convinced the uniqueness I saw in Yavneh graduates wasn’t due to luck but rather due to the faculty, staff, and leadership of Yavneh, as well as supportive parents, that established and implemented the vision of the school. I am committed, along with the entire board, to continue in the footsteps of those before us to ensure that the school will remain the unique program that it is, while continuing to innovate and refine our current program.
I also had the pleasure, while working at Kehillah, to work with Cindy Schlesinger in her leadership role at Hausner Jewish Day School as well as in her role as co-chair of the Head of School Search Committee for Kehillah, on which I served. I look forward to working with Cindy again and supporting her through the board’s work on long-term strategic planning and its continued fiduciary oversight as she builds upon Yavneh’s successes.
I realize that this school year will be challenging due to the pandemic. It will not be easy for parents, our children, the faculty or staff, or the leadership of the school. Yet I am heartened by the closeness of the Yavneh community and by our willingness to show our humanity, pull together, look at situations from one another’s perspectives, and appreciate each other as unique and important members of our Yavneh community.
I look forward to beginning my board leadership this year with a strong, hard-working board in partnership with Cindy Schlesinger, our excellent Head of School. May Yavneh continue to go from strength to strength. I wish you all a good year where learning is sweet and all of our children thrive.
Thank you,
Alison Ruebusch
President, Board of Trustees
