Brooklyn, NY – Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is about to receive an application to create a Hebrew-language charter school. Welcome to New York City’s next big new-school controversy.
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Debate continues over the year-old Khalil Gibran International Academy – a non-charter Arab-language school. And the Hebrew school is sure to face objections from groups that suspect instruction will include a religious element.
If approved, the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School would open with 150 co-ed students in kindergarten and 1st grade, with plans to add a grade each year and grow to a total of 450 kids. The location: ethnically diverse Community School District 22 in central and southern Brooklyn.
The school’s lead applicant is journalist Sara Berman. Among its key supporters is her father, Michael Steinhardt, a major benefactor of NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education.
The school would cover the core academic subjects, but be the first New York charter school to also offer Hebrew-language instruction. (A few regular New York public schools offer Hebrew as a foreign-language elective.) It would also teach about Jewish culture and history and modern Israeli society.
That approach is similar to that of the Hellenic Charter School in Brooklyn, which pairs instruction in classical Greek and Latin with classes in Greek culture and history. Other language/culture charter schools in New York include Amber Charter School in Washington Heights and the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School in Rochester, which both feature instruction in Spanish and in Hispanic cultures.
The Hebrew Academy would avoid teaching religious doctrine (and respect other constitutional limits), but this charter application will still spark complaints. Extremists (like Americans United for the Separation of Church and State) act as if any discussion of religion in public schools imperils the republic.
The US Constitution lets public schools teach about religion – as long as they don’t cross the line into teaching religion as doctrine.
If it wins approval, it will add to the mix of secular public-school options available in New York City. As a bonus, the approval process may trigger a long-overdue debate about the role of religion in our public schools. Perhaps we can even expand the concept of parental choice in New York to include religious schools.
I am concerned that some financially-strapped parents – aren’t we all? – will consider sending their children to this free school instead of a regular yeshiva and thus deprive them of a proper Torah education.
This has been tried in Florida, and this very problem has arisen.
Despite all of the problems, an intensive yeshiva education remains by far the best way to insure continuity of our precious mesorah to the next dor.
shloimy – you are not wrong, but when faced with a choice of paying $10,000 or $20,000 a year for tuition versus FREE, some parents have not other choice.
when we moved to florida over 20 years ago, the tuition i paid for my daughter in 1st grade was more than my parents paid for my college education…
many difficult choices my friend.
and when so-called ‘jewish’ philanthropists give their money to libraries and museums and give nothing (even to the federation) for jewish education, you have to wonder how jewish they really are…
There isn’t only one type of frumkeit. It may be a better education to your child if they are sent to such a school and at the same time they observe a better home. A home where parents are not as stressed, not participating in questionable business practices in order to make ends meet. B’H we live in a wonderful frum society, but with 5-6 children, tuition and camps can be in the area of 50-100K annually. That figure does not even include weddings or support of married children. How many people are getting sick and emotionally harmed from this stress? How many are R”L committing suicide? The Torah dictates that we live a certain way. One of those ways is a healthy way. Living stress free may be part of Pikuach nefesh and comes before wearing a specific black hat, or worrying about how much or little a child will learn in school. This is not for or against sending a child to such a Charter school, it is merely put out there for people to be more understanding.
1:33, there is no question that frum families are stretched beyong the limit with the skyrocketing tuition costs these days. I am in full sympathy with the concerns you raise. Very valid. And I am certainly not expressing a preference for any “brand” of yiddishkeit. “Eilu v’eilu”, there is room for all of Klal Yisroel in this world, Baruch HaShem!
However, to put children into public school, even a Hebrew-speaking charter one, is not the answer. To me, any school that is not dedicated to preservation of Torah, Mitzvos and the holiness of Klal Yisroel is no place for a young impressionable Jewish child.
Shloimy, you are focused on frum people. All of the kids in the Florida charter school are from non-frum families, and the goal of the “after school” program there is to eventually mainstream them into regular yeshivas.
Think of the charter school as a kiruv factory.
Of course, the yeshivahs will have to figure out what to do when the student population increases tenfold, kein yirbu.
A Hebrew public school that cannot teach Torah is NEVER a substitute for authentic Yiddishkeit.People will think that they are “good Jews” by going there while not realizing that there is nothing Jewish there.We have to differentiate between ‘Hebrew,Zionist,Jewish,Yisroel,Torah. The world mixes these into one and a school like this would only add to the confusion.
Irony of Ironies, the few remaining Yiddishistin will demand a Yiddish speaking charter school.
7:42, as far as the non-frum kids, I agree that a charter school would be better than attending a general public school. But in fact, frum kids WERE going to the charter school in Miami. Look at the photos in the press. See how many yarmulkes?
Kol tuv and Gut shabbos!
Shloimy