What does your school need from a Jewish day school teacher?
Hiring for a Jewish day school is two hiring problems in one. Before you post, work out which role your vacancy actually is: the general studies side of the program — math, English, science, history, the early grades — or the Judaic studies and Hebrew side, where the subject is also the tradition. The two draw on different candidate pools, different training programs and different screens, so they need different postings and different interview questions.
Spell the role out in the posting: general studies, Judaic studies (Tanakh, rabbinic texts, Jewish history and practice), Hebrew language, or a hybrid that spans the curriculum. Note the grade band and the duties beyond the classroom too — advisory, supervision of prayer or holiday programming, trips, and whatever else your community expects of faculty.
The sector you are hiring within is counted by the federal government. NCES's Private School Universe Survey counted 1,168 Jewish private schools in 2021-22, with 298,971 students and 34,187 full-time-equivalent teachers. The count is by religious orientation, and it includes Orthodox yeshivas that sit outside any one network's membership.
This page is the Jewish day school hub in our library on hiring for private and charter schools; the sections below take the hire end to end. For the job itself from the teacher's side, start with what a Jewish day school teacher does and adjust it to your school's own expectations.
Looking to hire? Post your jewish day school teacher role on SchoolHires and reach people who already work in private and charter schools.
Post a Jewish Day School Teacher Job →What qualifications are required at a private vs a charter school?
A Jewish day school is a private school, and the qualification rules are state law — the same state-by-state, category-by-category picture that governs private school hiring. What binds your school depends on your state and on what kind of private school yours is: accredited, approved, licensed, chartered or simply registered under state law.
Michigan shows how directly a statute can name private and religious schools. MCL 388.553, the Private, Denominational and Parochial Schools Act, says no person may teach the regular or elementary grade studies in a private, denominational or parochial school without holding a certificate that would qualify them to teach in like grades of Michigan public schools.
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Non-Public Education summary for Michigan, updated in 2016, reads differently: it calls certification optional, accepting a Michigan certificate, a state nonpublic teaching permit or a bachelor's degree. It also says the minimum education requirements are waived when a nonpublic school objects to certification on a sincerely held religious belief.
The statute and the federal summary conflict, and our research did not establish how Michigan applies the statute today. The act's covered-school definition reaches non-public schools instructing children under 16 in the first 8 grades. How the Michigan Department of Education applies it to high-school-only grades, or to Hebrew and Judaic studies classes, is not stated in the sources our research read. Ask your state education agency before the posting goes up.
Where no certification statute covers your school, the hire is still not rule-free. Background checks and mandated-reporter duties are set by state law for the schools and roles each state names. An accrediting association may set expectations for the schools it accredits, and a school-choice program your school participates in may set its own teacher rules.
Degree and text-study expectations are yours to set and yours to verify. A candidate whose training is rabbinic or academic rather than in education brings subject depth but not automatically a teaching credential — judge the two separately, and check any certificate a candidate claims against the state agency that issued it.
Charter schools run on a different rulebook. What a charter teacher needs is set by that state's charter law and its authorizer, not by private-school practice. Nationally in 2020-21, 75.3% of public charter school teachers held a regular state teaching certificate and 11.5% held none; the traditional public figures were 90.9% and 1.3% (NCES). If the school you are hiring for is a charter rather than a day school, work from your state's charter rules — our guide to charter school teacher certification requirements walks through them state by state.
For the private-school side, our state-by-state guide to private school teacher certification requirements explains how the categories differ.
Rules change, and categories differ. Confirm the qualification rules that bind your school with your state education agency before the posting goes up.
How much should you pay a Jewish day school teacher?
Start with the honest label: BLS has no private-school occupation code and no Jewish day school code, so no federal table is a day school pay scale.
The broadest series is BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025 in elementary and secondary schools (NAICS 611100), all school ownerships combined — public district, charter and private together. For elementary school teachers, except special education (SOC 25-2021), the national median annual wage was $63,980, the mean $72,710, and the 10th-to-90th percentile range $47,990 to $104,390.
BLS also publishes a series for privately owned elementary and secondary schools (industry 611105). For the same occupation it shows a median of $58,140, a mean of $59,410 and employment of 159,700. It is the series closest to your school's world, but it is still an occupation table — not a salary scale for your classrooms.
NCES's survey gives the sector comparison, with its year attached. In 2020-21, regular full-time private school teachers averaged $46,400 in base salary, summer earnings excluded, against $61,600 in public schools overall. NCES's 2020-21 sector breakdown shows averages of $45,200 at Catholic schools, $40,100 at other religious schools and $56,000 at nonsectarian schools. Those are 2020-21 averages, not current pay — later NTPS salary tables were not available as of October 2026 — and a Jewish day school's scale is its own, set by the school.
Budget from the market you actually hire in: the district and charter scales your candidates weigh, the published scales other schools choose to share, and what your Judaic studies roles must offer to hold candidates who could teach general studies elsewhere. Stipends, tuition remission and housing change the total offer — cost them with your CPA before they appear in an offer letter.
For how pay differs across the sector, our guide to private school teacher pay by school type collects what is known by school type.
Where do you find Jewish day school teachers?
Run the channels in parallel through the winter rather than one after another.
Training programs built for Jewish education are a dedicated pipeline, and they are worth working early. Yeshiva University's Azrieli Graduate School offers a part-time evening two-year teacher program — an MS in Education with 30 credits plus student teaching — for working Jewish educators, with financial support that may reach 50% of tuition.
Hebrew College, in Newton, Massachusetts, offers a Master of Jewish Education (MJEd) as a three-year program delivered online with field experience, plus for-credit graduate certificates in Jewish education. DeLeT — Day School Leadership through Teaching — is now run by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Its 13-month program combines graduate coursework with a yearlong internship in a Jewish day school in Los Angeles, San Diego or the Bay Area, leading to a California teaching credential and a Certificate in Jewish Day School Teaching. Graduates of these programs arrive with classroom field experience and, in DeLeT's case, a year inside a day school; our guide to Jewish day school teacher training programs lists them from the candidate's side.
Independent-school placement firms are worth working too. Carney Sandoe describes its Placement Group as success-based: the school pays a fee only when it hires a candidate through the firm, and the fee amount is not published. The firm says it works with over 2,000 independent, private, boarding and charter schools in 48 states and 32 countries — a self-reported count. Its services are free to candidates; client schools pay the fees.
Our research could not read the pages of Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, so we make no claims about what it offers schools, what its services cost or whom they reach — check with it directly.
Beyond the Jewish-specific channels, the familiar ones are also in play: national and regional education job boards, your own website, teacher job fairs, and education schools whose graduates want faith-based settings. Our guide to where to post teaching jobs compares the board options. And do not overlook the referral network your current faculty, families and congregation ties already form.
It also pays to see your listing the way candidates see it. Browse Jewish day school teacher jobs before you write yours, and note what a posting tells a candidate — pay, contract term, start date, faith expectations — that yours currently leaves out.
How do you screen and interview Jewish day school teachers?
A workable sequence for a small school: a structured read of applications against written criteria, a screening call, a demo lesson in front of real students, reference checks, then a campus visit with the people the teacher will actually work beside. The full sequence, and where it fits in the year, is our guide to the school hiring process.
For general studies roles, screen teaching practice the way any private school would: watch how the candidate opens the class, checks for understanding, and handles the student who is lost.
For Judaic studies and Hebrew roles, add the subject screens only your program can run. Ask for a Hebrew-language demonstration if your classes teach in Hebrew. Set text work in the sources your curriculum actually uses, and ask how the candidate connects the material to students at the age you teach.
Your strongest Jewish studies candidate may arrive with seminary or academic training rather than an education degree or a state certificate. Whether your school can hire them for a classroom is your state's rule, and what to weigh before you do is covered in our guide to hiring uncertified teachers.
At a Jewish day school, mission fit is part of the job. Ask about the Jewish-life duties the role carries and the community expectations your handbook publishes. Where the legal lines fall on faith-based hiring questions is a legal question for counsel, not something a hiring manager should assume — our guide to religious school employment law explains the framework. Have counsel review your application and interview materials before the season starts.
Run the safety checks in the same pass as the academic ones, and complete whatever check your state or your own policy requires — background checks before the first day, not after.
When in the hiring calendar should you start?
The independent-school season has a recognizable shape, and the placement conferences mark it. Carney Sandoe describes its hiring-conference season as running from January through April each year — the window our research reads as the core of the independent-school faculty hiring season.
Its 2026 calendar included FORUM/Connect Philadelphia on January 30-31, FORUM/Boston on February 13-14, FORUM/West Los Angeles on February 20 and FORUM/NYC on March 6 — the winter-spring block your own posting calendar should respect.
The conferences are built around pre-scheduled 30-minute interviews. They are free for the firm's own candidates, schools pay registration discounted for members, and 2027 dates had been announced as of October 2026.
Work backwards from the start date you need. A fall-start hire posted in mid-winter leaves room for the demo lesson, the Hebrew or text screen, the reference calls and the campus visit; a hire posted in June is choosing from whoever is still looking. When a vacancy opens midyear, post it when it opens — midyear hiring runs on its own clock, not the winter season's.
For the whole cycle month by month, our school hiring timeline lays out posting, interviewing and offering from first vacancy to first day.
How do you onboard and keep them?
Onboarding is paperwork plus belonging, and the belonging part is where a day school has its own work. Give the new teacher a named mentor on the side of the curriculum they actually teach, a written first-week schedule built around your calendar, curriculum and assessment expectations in writing, and introductions to the colleagues, families and community they will work with.
For a Judaic studies hire new to day schools, or a general studies hire new to Jewish schools, the mentor's job includes the school's own routines — prayer, assemblies, the rhythm of the Jewish year — that no credential course covers on its own.
Retention is where hiring pays itself back. Of the teachers teaching in 2020-21, 82% of private school teachers were still at the same school in 2021-22, 6% had moved to a different school and 12% had left teaching, according to NCES's Teacher Follow-up Survey, updated May 2024. Keeping your stayers is cheaper than re-running this whole process every spring.
The movers' reasons tell you where the leverage sits: among private school teachers who voluntarily changed schools between 2020-21 and 2021-22, 36% cited salary and other job benefits as the most important reason, against 9% of public school movers.
A salary schedule you can defend, extra duties that are assigned rather than assumed, professional development worth the time, and evaluation that feeds development instead of paperwork are the levers your school controls. Our guide to teacher retention works through them.
Employer information, not legal, tax or immigration advice. Certification, background-check and religious-employer rules are set state by state and agency by agency — confirm the rules that bind your school with your state education agency, and with counsel where the question is a religious-employer one.