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Though he's retiring after a 33-year career as an educator at the East Brunswick Jewish Center (EBJC), Steve Solomon still has strong positions on the future of Jewish education.

Solomon spoke to The Jewish State on his three decades at the Conservative synagogue -- including 28 years as its education director -- what religious schools must do in order to ensure their viability, and his plans now that he is retired.

Arriving at EBJC halfway through the school year in 1976 as a 7th grade teacher, Solomon recalled that in his first year the enrollment dropped from 50 students to only a dozen by the end of the year.

"The first thing I noticed is that the majority of kids dropped out after their bar or bat mitzvahs," he recalled. "That's just what most people did -- you had a bar or bat mitzvah and then dropped out."

Immediately, Solomon felt that this situation was profoundly wrong, and he and Rabbi Chaim Rogoff, EBJC's rabbi at the time, began working together to change the school's culture.

When he became the education director in 1980, Solomon enacted staff and curriculum changes in an effort to retain more students.

"We changed the type of teacher," he said. "We looked for teachers familiar with kids that age, many of whom taught at public schools and who were inspiring."

Additionally, Solomon changed the Hebrew high school program by removing Hebrew language instruction; incorporating more audio, visual, and multimedia components; and adding more material on the Holocaust and Jewish ethics.

Solomon admitted that the removal of Hebrew language instruction from the curriculum was controversial, but defended the change by mentioning how such instruction so late in a child's education was futile unless they received outside lessons.

According to Solomon, these changes proved successful.

"In its heyday (12 years ago) we had a peak of about 1,000 families, and a school with approximately 350-plus kids," he said.

These numbers dwarfed those when he first arrived at EBJC, when only 425-450 families belonged to the synagogue. The retention rate for those who had already become b'nai mitzvah peaked at 95-100 percent during this time.

Solomon said that this retention rate was one of the accomplishments he is most proud of. Others that he is particularly proud of include the number of former students (Solomon estimates 15) who have pursued careers in Jewish education, the program he instituted that provides paid or volunteer positions at the shul for students, and leading six family trips to Israel.

The six congregational trips that Solomon led brought more than 500 people to Israel.

"I believe that any Jewish person becomes much more appreciative of Judaism by going to Israel," Solomon said about these trips.

Solomon lamented the decreased enrollment at the EBJC's religious school over the past decade, which now has approximately 150-160 students. Describing the growth and decline as a bell curve, Solomon said that demographic and economic challenges are to blame for the decreased enrollment.

"The demographics of the Middlesex County area have changed," he said. "It's diminished greatly the number of young conservative and reform Jews."

He also referenced a demographer who in a recent meeting of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County cited the median age of Jews in Middlesex County as 55.

Solomon believes that school mergers are the solution to overcoming these challenges because they lower overall operating costs and provide the critical mass of students necessary to be appealing.

"No kid wants to go to a program with five, six, seven, eight students," he said. "For kids, you need a larger group. In this day and age, some sort of merger, some sort of community school, will make these schools more viable."

The midrasha program that he and Rogoff developed provides a model, Solomon said. The program brought students together from as far as Staten Island to have a more intense educational experience than was offered elsewhere. The program met twice a week as opposed to the regular once-a-week program, though it has since ended.

After such long and fulfilling career as a Jewish educator, Solomon says he is now ready to retire.

"I've been in education and working since I was 15 years old, for over 50 years," Solomon said. "I have a feeling that I'm going to keep busy doing things that I enjoy doing, and not because I have to."