Registration FAQs

🗓 Priority Registration: Tuesday, Nov. 3

Who’s Eligible: 2026 Summer Camp, Teen program, Quest, and B*Mitzvah participants & their siblings; 2026 Jewish Families of Color Weekend registered families.

Please note:  Only summer program registrations are processed during the priority registration period, and all weekend program registrations from Priority and Early Registration will be processed beginning on November 11.

🗓 Early Registration: Tuesday, Nov. 10

Who’s Eligible: 2026 Weekend Programs; 2026 waitlisted participants and cancellations. 

Please note: Only summer program registrations are processed during the priority registration period, and all weekend program registrations from Priority and Early Registration will be processed beginning on November 11.

🗓 Open Registration: Tuesday, Nov. 17

Who’s Eligible: Everyone! Tell your friends and family.

We instituted randomized registration because we saw that our registration process was creating a stressful “race to click” for Tawonga families. Because many programs fill quickly, reserving a spot required parents to be available precisely when our registration opened – and to race through the registration process. However, it was not always possible for families to be able to register right when registration opened due to professional or personal obligations, lack of consistent internet service, and other factors; we want to make this process more enjoyable, fair and equitable.

To provide transparency and equity in our process, and remove the stressful “race to click,” we use a 24-hour stress-free registration window with a randomized registration mechanism.

All registrations received within the first 24-hours (9am-9am) of each registration tier will be held, without being processed, and will be considered as received on the first day, regardless of time of receipt.After the 24-hour window, registrations will be processed by household in randomized order, with the goal of giving campers one of their top choices. All campers will be registered until a specific program is filled, and if the number of registrations exceeds the program capacity, some campers will be placed on a waitlist using our randomized process and will be registered in their second choice program. Following the first 24-hour window within each tier, registrations will be processed on a first come, first served basis.

Families will receive confirmation emails within 72 hours. Campers who are hoping to return to Camp with friends from the previous summer who did not all receive spots in the same program can opt to change programs in order to be together, as long as space is available.

Registrations are processed by householdFor example, if one child in a household comes up tenth in the randomized system, their sibling(s) will be registered along with them at that time.

Families will receive confirmation emails within 72 hours after the start of each registration tier. Campers who are hoping to return to Camp with friends from the previous summer who did not all receive spots in the same program can opt to change programs in order to be together, as long as space is available.

No. Each year is treated independently of other years, and all campers – whether returning or new to Camp – start with a clean slate. Campers who attended a summer program last summer do have an opportunity to register before others in our tiered registration system.

We want families who are eligible for Priority Registration to be able to register for summer camp programs in the first tier of registration (beginning November 3) in order to have the best chance to return to Camp with their bunkmates from previous years. Those who are eligible for Priority Registration will be able to submit their registration for Weekend Programs at the time they register, but we want all families who were enrolled in a 2026 Weekend Program to have equitable access to the randomized registration for those programs. Aside from Jewish Families of Color participants, registrations for all 2027 Weekend Programs will be processed following November 11 (for both Priority and Early Registration families).

In very rare circumstances, we will allow a child to attend a program that is outside the designated grade range. Typically, these exceptions are made for children who repeated a grade or started school a year later than their peers, making them the same age as the majority of the other cabins with whom they’d be bunked. Because our cabins often include a combination of campers across two grades, we want to ensure that campers are at similar developmental levels. It is rare that we would allow three grades within one bunk. If we find that there is sufficient demand for campers outside the designated grade range and there is space available in the program in late winter/early spring, we may allow a group of campers to have a grade exception. Otherwise, our staff will work with you to find a second choice program that has a grade range that includes your camper.

Generally speaking, no. Because our programs are group-centered, and our bunk community is central to the Tawonga experience, it’s important that campers start and end the program together. We do not allow campers to enroll for three-week programs who only want to stay for two weeks. However, if you have an extenuating circumstance within the first or last 24 hours of Camp, please contact us at [email protected]. Campers may leave early from Session 4 to accommodate early school start dates.

We understand how frustrating it can be when the dates of your child’s school and desired Camp session overlap. Over the last decade, we’ve found that the academic calendars of our college-aged staff are ending later in June, and that many Bay Area based school districts are beginning their academic year earlier than ever before. This truncates the number of weeks we can offer programs to simultaneously accommodate the needs of our families and properly train our staff.

Campers may leave early from Session 4 to accommodate school start dates, and we will coordinate transportation from Camp on the Sunday before the end of the session. We understand how frustrating it can be to navigate many calendars, especially when they overlap. The shortening of summer makes scheduling challenging, and the vast difference in each school district’s calendar proves particularly tricky. We are not able to prorate session fees for early departures. Thanks for your understanding.

Our goal is to create a summer structure that works well for our community. Over the past several years, we’ve seen changes in school calendars and demand for various program lengths. For example, demand for two-week programs has grown considerably. At the same time, summer is getting shorter. Schools are ending later and starting earlier, which has made the beginning and end of our summer increasingly challenging. Our staff, largely college students, grapple with finals overlapping with the start of summer camp, making their availability limited as they finish their studies. The 2027 calendar makes this especially noticeable. Because Memorial Day falls on May 31, this pushes our entire schedule a full week later than in 2026. Maintaining our current summer program structure would push the end of camp well into August and would mean many campers would have to choose between camp and their first week or two of school.

Tawonga used this streamlined session structure for many years prior to COVID. In 2021, we intentionally changed our model to reduce camper turnover and the number of arrivals and departures. Then, beginning in 2022, due to demonstrated demand, we created a structure with shorter sessions embedded within longer sessions. That model was what Tawonga needed at that moment. However, as campers and staff grapple with shorter summers, we’ve learned that a more streamlined structure will better serve our campers, families, and staff.

Community is one of the most important aspects of a session at Tawonga. With embedded shorter sessions inside a longer session, campers were ending their session before the rest of the community, or starting once the community had already been established. A streamlined structure means that campers in a session start together, experience the session together, and end together. This structure also helps us recruit, hire, train, and retain excellent staff – which ultimately improves the camper experience.

We have returned the In-Training schedule back to its three-week format, overlapping with Taste of Camp and Session 2. This schedule was a successful format for nearly 20 years. By shifting our calendar to overlap two shorter sessions, it enables the In-Training participants to work with campers who are significantly younger than them, which deepens their learning experience.