CATHY Sunshine has the perfect surname for what she does.

As a management consultant, she is hired to detect systemic patterns that hold companies back, reduce efficiency, cut communications, erode profits, even — in extreme cases — shut the company down.

What she does is shine light — sunshine, if you prefer — into the dark corridors and hiding places where such corporate bogeymen dwell, and then devises a plan to expel them.

Her skills might sound mystical to those not hardwired for corporate psychology, group dynamics and organizational behavior, but Sunshine insists that she owes a great deal to old-fashioned common sense, not to mention a dash of Jewish thinking.

Her current firm, the Sunshine Consultancy, is the descendant of earlier versions of Sunshine’s forays into the corporate sphere, the earliest of which, Sunshine Professional Services, was founded in Denver in 1975.

WITH the encouragement and participation of a growing number of yeshivot and day schools across North America, the Orthodox Union is moving ahead with a two-pronged approach to respond to the crisis in Jewish education in the current economic environment.

The results will be noticeable as early as the beginning of the school year in September.

The two aspects of the plan are assisting the schools in making savings in non-academic areas while finding new sources of income at a time of reduced philanthropic giving; and providing an alternative to parents who cannot afford to pay annual tuition for each child by establishing a network of schools that offer a strong basic education but without a complete complement of programs such as are offered by day schools now.