The eighth-grade graduates at Heilicher Minneapolis Jewish Day School will be the last under the current name of the school. Thanks to a multi-million dollar gift from the family of Harold and Mickey Smith, which is part of a $40 million endowment campaign, the school is going to be renamed Smith Jewish Academy.
The announcement was made at the HMJDS May 28 annual meeting. The amount of the gift was not disclosed, but school officials said it was the largest gift in the school’s 40-year history and triples the current endowment.
The Hineni Campaign combines both the endowment campaign and a shorter-term $10 million campaign for more immediate programmatic and capital improvements.
“The campaign is a transformational effort to secure affordability and programmatic excellence now, while growing our endowment to sustain these priorities for generations to come,” Board President Esther Goldberg-Davis said.
The endowment campaign is currently at $15 million, and when finished, the endowment will create $2 million of annual income for financial aid and long-term program support – like the 8th grade trip to Israel.
“Jewish education was something that was very important to my parents, and I just thought it was a wonderful way to honor their memory and their legacy,” said Rabbi Mitch Smith, Harold and Mickey Smith’s son. “At least in St. Paul, you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who was a fiercer advocate of Jewish education than Harold Smith.”
Head of School Dan Ahlstrom said that the scholarships would go a long way to helping families afford to send their children to the school.
“The school has always been open to families of modest means. We’ve done that for 40 years and we will continue to do it,” he said. “And on the other side of this, the school has to figure out how to do that in a way that’s financially sustainable.
“[Tuition] was discounted for various reasons, but there were no dollars to back that up. It came out of everything” in the budget.
Having the endowment, Alhstrom said, creates long-term stability for the school.
“One of our primary goals with the endowment is to exchange essentially discounted dollars, which are not anything, with actual scholarship dollars,” he said. “When the kids come in and they’re supported by actual funding, the [discounted] money transfers to the operating needs of the school.”
Goldberg-Davis said that the board has been working for many years to get the organization to a more financially sustainable place.
“Because the way our budget is structured right now is that no matter how much fundraising we do, unless we raise millions and millions of dollars every year, all of the money that we currently raise goes to plug a budget hole,” she said. “We’re not necessarily operating in a deficit, but that means we don’t have extra funds to then invest in the things that we want, like program improvements or pay raises.”
Goldberg-Davis said the board has recognized that multiple levers of fiscal responsibility were needed to help stabilize the school: reducing costs where possible and increasing revenue.
“We knew a campaign was necessary,” she said. “As we were determining the scope of a potential campaign, this lead gift began to take shape.”
HMJDS has had two sizeable donations in the past eight years that keep the school operating as enrollment dipped to its lowest point. In 2017, Heilicher alumni parents and philanthropists Lynne and Andrew Redleaf provided a ten-year grant of $9 million, primarily to support tuition relief as well as establish a tuition-reduction grant for children of professionals working at Jewish nonprofit organizations.
In 2019, the school received a commitment of $2.5 million in 2019 from Rabbi Mitch Smith, in honor of Mickey and Harold Smith, focused on supporting the renamed Harold and Mickey Smith Judaic Studies Department. After the new gift that establishes the new school name, the Judaic studies department will drop the Smith name.
The school operates on the Barry Family Campus in St. Louis Park, which houses the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, Minnesota JCC-Sabes Center, and Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, among others. Despite not owning the building, there are targeted capital improvements that the school is looking to make. One of the improvements Ahlstrom and Development Director Kiel Majewski discussed was renovating the kitchen and cafeteria space.
“This is all an ongoing conversation with Federation,” Majewski said.
Said Ahlstrom: “When we moved into this building, like lots of Jewish things, it was not much more than a handshake. There is some documentation, but it’s grossly out of date.”
Ahlstrom said the school underwent a feasibility study recently to survey the community about the school’s needs. He said the need for capital improvements didn’t rate very high.
“What we got back was that mostly people are okay with the space, and … program and affordability were a higher level of interest in capital improvements,” he said. “Having said that, there’s some acknowledgement that there are some spaces in the building that you know need more immediate attention.
“I also believe that, you know, when people see what kind of energy a nice renovated space brings, they might change their mind on that. There is a real benefit to thinking a little more about the aesthetics in a way that makes sense for kids.”
What’s in a name?
The Heilicher name was added to the Minneapolis Jewish Day School in 2008, with a gift from local businessman and philanthropist Amos Heilicher in his name and of his late wife, Celia. The Heilicher Foundation, managed by brothers Matt and Jamie Heilicher and their cousin, Marty Kloner (Amos and Celia’s nephews and grandson, respectively), gave their blessing as trustees to the name change.
“Our main goal is the health and wellness of the school overall,” Matt Heilicher said. “We talked about the opportunity to bring in a new batch of money and how that school needs it. And while the name is something that’s important to us, the survival and health of the school is more important.
“We put ego aside to support it because it’s that important to us that the school continues on.”
Heilicher, whose four children are graduates of the school and is also a former board president of the school, said that in a competitive private school environment, the funds are needed.
“Funding is critical to make sure families can afford it and that you’re building the best product. It all takes money.” he said. “We want all kids who want a Jewish education to be able to get it.”
Heilicher said his uncle’s gift had been planned as part of a possibile building campaign in the mid-2000s. However, after the 2006 housing crisis, enrollment fell from its peak of more than 350 to around 160 when Ahlstrom came to the school. In the past three years, enrollment has crept upwards to 176; with current staffing levels – and depending on the grades that students entered at – the school could support about 200 students.
“They’ve done a great job of stabilizing from the bottom and moving back up,” Heilicher said. “We need this kind of money so that we can fund the scholarships that are needed, fund the academic program and just continue to improve all aspects of the school.”
Despite not being part of the school name, the Heilicher name will still be a part of the school – although what that looks like is still being discussed between the school and the family trustees.
The other piece of the name change is taking “Minneapolis” out of the name, in recognition that the school serves the entire Twin Cities Jewish community. Talmud Torah of St. Paul had operated the Newman School, its K-5 day school, but closed the program due to falling enrollment in 2023.
Updated logo, fonts and colors will be unveiled before the upcoming 2025-26 school year.
“We are using this opportunity to do a deeper look into what our brand has to say and the opportunities there are for telling our story more effectively and expressing what this school means as a central, essential institution in the Twin Cities,” Goldberg-Davis said. “[It’s] a place that is educating students, immersing them in a Jewish environment for the nine years that they are in school, giving them the skills to walk confidently in the world as a Jew in these complicated times. It’s a tremendous pipeline of engaged Jewish leaders in whatever community they end up in.”
Majewski said the raising the brand value of the school is as much a part of this transition as raising money.
“It’s understanding ourselves and our market position better. It’s understanding how to strengthen our curricula, our services, our educational philosophy. It’s understanding how to tell our story better with narrative and data,” he said. “We’re going to change the narrative of this school in the community. We’re going to make it the most innovative, effective and accessible dual culture immersion program in the Twin Cities.”
