MARBLEHEAD – While the fate of the MetroWest Jewish Day School has been sealed after announcing it would close at the end of the school year, the fate of Marblehead’s Arthur J. Epstein Hillel School has yet to be written.

The Epstein Hillel School is hoping to meet its $3 million fundraising and student retention and enrollment goals starting in mid-February to keep the school sustainable for the coming years.

“Late last year, the school announced its tenuous financial position and embarked on an ambitious $3 million campaign designed to support the school over the next 3-4 years as it reconfigures itself into a Pre-K-5 school,” said an update from the Epstein Hillel School emailed to the Journal. “The school has already raised over 50% of its goal and is currently in conversations with several donors to close the remaining gap.”

Epstein Hillel said it must meet several benchmarks by mid-February, though its board chair believes it has raised enough money to sustain it through the rest of the school year.

“The school will not open in September 2026 unless it is confident that it has a multi-year path forward to self-sustainability,” the school said.

Michele Cohen, chair of the Board of Directors of the only independent Jewish Day School north of Boston, hopes the community will step up so it can reach its $3 million fundraising goal.

“If we don’t believe that we have both the funding and family buy-in to sustain us through a multi-year transition, we will very sadly have to make this our last year,” Cohen said in a statement.

She said adapting both secular, religious and cultural components of the educational program is vital to creating the North Shore’s Jewish day school for the future.

“We will continue to grow our Pre-K, camp and afterschool programs to engage more families and create strong revenue streams,” she said.

The school is working with the adjacent Jewish Community Center of the North Shore on Community Road to increase synergies where possible.

So far, the school has raised $1.6 million of the $3 million fundraising goal, and Cohen said she was optimistic about the school would meet this.

“We do have a lot of major gifts we are hoping to close,” she said.

Cohen said the school will not be collecting pledges until the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1, and only if the campaign is successful.

“We’re not collecing pledges unless we know we have enough to go forward with a multi-year plan,” Cohen said.

Stepping up

Many families are stepping up with multi-year pledges.

EHS enrolls 84 students pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, including 22 students in grades 6-8, grades that are going away in the fall.

The school has set a benchmark of 57 students for the elementary school, and right now they have 50 signed up, Cohen said.

The school said while it continues to focus on fundraising, its enrollment and retention of students are a top priority. Parents have rallied in support of the new pre-K through-grade 5 program, the school said.

Prospective parent Karen Bar-Or, said in a statement about becoming an EHS family: “The strength of our community depends on institutions like this remaining vibrant and viable. Preserving Epstein Hillel School means investing not only in our children, but in the future of Jewish life on the North Shore.”

“The school is truly our community, and we are so grateful for the families and staff that we’ve met,” Coree Dovev said in the statement from the school. She and her husband, Seth, have two children, a pre-kindergartener and a fourth grader enrolled at EHS. They said they “are thriving both academically and socially” with the school deepening their family’s connection to Judaism.

“Since learning the difficult news of a potential closure, many EHS parents have been working nonstop to support the school’s future,” Coree Dovev said.

Sam and Lauren (‘07) Andler said in a statement they are looking forward to having their son, Siggy, start in the pre-kindergarten program next year.

“Epstein Hilel’s recent community wide fundraising effort has invigorated the parent community, inspired new families (like ours),” Sam Andler said, “and galvanized its place in the hearts of the Jewish community at large. The importance of a Jewish day school education simply can’t be overstated. We are both excited and hopeful!”

Cohen said for those families on the fence about sending their kids to Epstein Hillel, “It’s in everyone’s best interest to apply so we can see the interest.”

‘Education grounded in Jewish values’

Head of school Amy Gold is seeking input from current and future parents in the redesign of the elementary school program to meet the values and interests of North Shore parents and children, the school said.

“Our goal remains to offer an excellent education grounded in Jewish values at an accessible price. We are in the process of surveying our current families to better understand what is important to them,” Gold said in a statement.

Full tuition will remain at $18,000. The school has also anticipated that families receiving financial aid should expect tuition increases of up to 20% as it narrows the gap between tuition and the true cost of educating students.

This week, the much smaller pre-K through eighth grade MetroWest Jewish Day School in Framingham announced it will close at the end of this school year after 25 years, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and a post on its website.  School leaders concluded its model of highly individualized Jewish day school education was no longer sustainable in the MetroWest.

This school enrolled only about 20 students across all grades with a website that showed 15 faculty and staff. EHS has about 34 administrators, faculty and staff, according to its website.

Combined Jewish Philanthropies’ Jewish Boston website lists 14 Jewish day schools, including MetroWest and Epstein Hillel, in the region.

Cohen said Epstein Hillel has been aware of the situation with MetroWest Jewish Day School for some time.

While there are many similarities, Cohen said one difference is that when MetroWest announced it was closing at the end of this academic year, its enrollment dropped, leaving it with only about 20 students.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s enrollment data online shows 39 students enrolled in MetroWest during the 2023-2024 school year and 25 students enrolled during the 2024-2025 school year.

Epstein Hillel’s enrollment data on DESE’s website shows 88 students during the 2024-2025 school year and 113 during the 2023-2024 school year.

“I do believe that we have the demand for a Jewish day school here and we are working to adapt our model to sustainably to meet that demand,” Cohen said.

To make a sustaining pledge to the school to help them reach their goal, please contact Michele Cohen (mcohen@epsteinhillel.org) or Amy Gold (agold@epsteinhilel.org). Pledges for the 2026-2027 school year will only be collected if the school moves forward.