JCC Early Childhood to open with interim team

JCC MetroWest’s Sharon & Stephen Seiden Early Childhood Center will start its fall semester without Jo Sohinki, its director since January 2006.

Sohinki left the center — at the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, in West Orange — to become assistant early childhood director at the Central Synagogue of New York, a position she began in July.

A successor has not been named; however, an interim early childhood management team has been appointed. Grace Kaplan, a 30-plus-year veteran of the JCC’s early childhood department and formerly its assistant director, will be responsible for educational oversight.

Katy Strulson will be in charge of program oversight for the JCC’s Parent Place program for new parents and of collaborations with both MetroWest’s Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life, and the Saint Barnabas Children’s Wellness Institute at the JCC.

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Stephanie Martin is assigned to oversee the enrichment components at the center, and Riva Chase will handle administrative issues.

“The transition has already proved a success,” said JCC MetroWest CEO Alan Feldman in an e-mail. “Grace, Katy, and Stephanie have been managing our early childhood summer day camp programs as well as preparing for the upcoming school year.”

Sohinki, who oversaw the closing of the early childhood program in what was then the Lautenberg Family JCC on the Aidekman campus in Whippany, declined to be interviewed. Her predecessor at the center was longtime director Dolores Greenfield, who retired in December 2005.

For information on the Seiden Early Childhood Center, contact 973-530-3479 or EarlyChildhoodWO@jccmetrowest.org.