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Though originally designed as a way to reduce overhead costs, the three-day North American Jewish Day School Leadership Conference in Teaneck from Jan. 17-19 resulted in an illustration of the value of interdenominational cooperation, organizers say.

"A year ago, when we started planning for our conference, we were feeling the pains of the economic crisis," recalled Dr. Marc Kramer, executive director of RAVSAK: The Jewish Community Day School Network. "We sensed that it would be virtually impossible to put one on, on our own."

What initially began as a "pragmatic arrangement," Kramer said, "turned into a robust collaboration" of Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and community day schools from across the United States and Canada.

The conference was a joint initiative of RAVSAK, the Institute for University-School Partnership at Yeshiva University, the Solomon Schechter Day School Association, and PARDeS: The Progressive Association of Reform Day Schools.

Pluralistic day school conferences have occurred previously under the auspices of organizations like Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE), but this conference, which approximately 600 educators attended, was the first time that the individual networks came together to jointly host their own conference.

"This not only advances Jewish education between various networks and administrations, but advances Jewish peoplehood," said Dr. Scott Goldberg, director of the Institute for University-School Partnership. "It really showed that collaboration is possible and additive in value."

While acknowledging that each of the types of schools had their own "schematic place in Jewish life," Kramer said that one of the comments he heard most frequently from attendees was "I met people that knew things that I didn't know and I knew things that they didn't."

"It was a mutually beneficial exchange, where neither of us are threatened and both of us are enriched," he said.

The theme, "Thriving in a New Reality," focused on the economic, administrative, and pedagogical issues shared by Jewish day schools of all streams.

There are new realities that confront day schools, said Kramer, such as advances in technology and the emergence of Hebrew-language public charter schools.

"We sought out a pragmatic program that would attend to these realities from different perspectives," Kramer said.

More than 60 sessions and workshops were offered to conference participants, ranging in topics from leadership development to expanding the use of technology in the classroom to the challenge of teacher recruitment and retention.

Dr. Elaine R.S. Cohen, executive director of the Solomon Schechter Day School Association, said that besides a three-hour session on Monday morning where organizations hosted their own meetings, the four organizations, calling themselves "the quartet," "planned all the sessions together, and opened them to everyone."

Organizers said that the joint conference allowed them to pull resources and have a greater caliber of keynote speakers as well as a greater variety of sessions and workshops than in their respective networks' past conferences.

Among the speakers were Alan November, senior partner at November Learning; Dr. Erica Brown, director of Adult Education at The Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning; Dr. Lee Shulman, president emeritus of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and author Jonah Lehrer.

Brown, whose session focused on innovation, spoke on the complexity of a single individual's innovation as a reference to explain how even more difficult innovation becomes when taking into account an entire institution, such as a school.

Fear, Brown told The Jewish State, "is the main impediment to innovation" and schools must overcome their insecurities in order to embrace innovation.

For organizers, the event not only provided a forum to exchange new ideas and strategies, but also demonstrated the value of transcending denominational boundaries.

The conference was an example of klal yisrael, Cohen said.

"It makes a statement to the Jewish world that unfortunately is too often focused on divisions," Cohen said.

Brown said that such divisions between denominations do not necessarily apply when talking about Jewish day schools, noting that day schools of all streams are facing many of the same challenges.

"In terms of school culture, there are a lot more commonalities in school culture than denominational culture," Brown said.

Organizers say that it is undetermined whether the conference will take place again next year.

"There's no question that this is a far more grand and public display of our efforts to be collaborative," Kramer said. "We don't know what the future will be. We're leaving that door open."

Goldberg said that the conference was also a way to remind people of the importance of Jewish education, which he said the community should make among its highest priorities.

"We are in a unique time and the Jewish people have many fronts in the battle, in the war I guess you can say, for the future of the Jewish people," Goldberg said.

"Jewish education is not a choice, but a guarantee that the Jewish people will survive and thrive," he added.