Columbus, OH – Columbus schools will rent a vacant school building to an outside program for special-needs children for a rock-bottom price — $1 a year.
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During its meeting, the Columbus school board unanimously approved the deal to lease Kent Elementary, which was closed in 2005, to LifeTown, a program run by the Schottenstein Chabad House at Ohio State University.
District officials said LifeTown will pay for utilities and daily maintenance of the building, an estimated $60,000 annual savings to the school district.
“We feel it benefits the district because it puts an occupant in the building so we don’t have a vacant building,” said Anne Dorrian-Lenzotti, the district’s director of real estate and shared facilities. “And the services, they benefit our district students.”
LifeTown, which will take over the facility Wednesday and expects to start the program in September, is a simulated village that teaches students life skills such as opening a bank account, going grocery shopping and interviewing for a job, said Rabbi Areyah Kaltmann, director of the Chabad House and LifeTown organizer.
The program puts students in real-life scenarios during a two-hour field trip. Kaltmann said he plans to attract between 700 and 1,000 students next year, mostly from Columbus schools.
During the first year, the program will be free, he said. Some details of the program, including sources of funding, have not been determined, he said.
LifeTown is a project of the Friendship Circle, a national nonprofit organization.
The friendship circle has been a lifesaver for many chabad shluchim. This has been a terrific avenue to do an outreach project in the realm of helping Jews’ physical needs and at the same time be appealing to potential philanthropists and the general non-frum public . A lot of shluchim have found a nitch.
– L. dafka-