Several students at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay couldn’t wait for school to begin. So they enrolled in a summer Talmud class that met for nearly five weeks, four hours a day, according to Rabbi Ed Harwitz, head of the 150-student San Francisco campus.
The intensive seminar, conducted in a liberal, yeshiva-style environment, is part of a slew of new programs, new teachers and new buildings that will greet students at Bay Area Jewish day schools and high schools this fall.
The over-arching message is more students, more classes and more innovation. In addition to Torah, Talmud and Hebrew, as well as traditional academics, new offerings in the region include an after-school robotics program, a chess club, an intensive writing program, expanded athletics, and hands-on work in social justice and conflict resolution. At Harwitz’s school, which will have its first graduation class in 2005, graduating students will present “a personal theological statement,” he said.
Seniors will also participate in the Capstone Project, a series of integrative courses in the humanities — history and English literature — and Judaic studies, said Harwitz. All students at JCHS will be able to take advantage of supplemental field trips, such as “The 100 Faces of God” exhibit at the Jewish Community Museum and an excursion to Los Angeles to meet with the top rabbis of various Jewish movements.
Twelfth-graders will also travel to Israel for 10 to 14 days next year and host a group of Israeli teens in the fall of 2005. The trip is in concert with a two-year Barbara and Dick Rosenberg-sponsored seminar in Israeli history and politics.
Hebrew Academy, with 220 students in pre-K through 12th grade, is also bringing Israel to its campus in San Francisco. “We are gaining eight shlichim [emissaries] from Israel,” said the school’s head, Rabbi Pinchas Lipner. “And they will be a tremendous force for the community as Orthodox role models.”
Lipner expects there will be more after-school activities, sports-related programs and Shabbat weekends.
The biggest news at the Kehillah Jewish High School in San Jose, according to Amy Sporer-Schiff, director of admissions, is the hiring of a new head of campus, Rabbi Reuven Greenwald. Greenwald comes from the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md., with 1,500 students. Kehillah, which will begin its third year, has 90 students in grades 9-11 and will have a full high school by the fall of 2005.
There are two new hires in the middle school at Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito, said Steve Tabak, head of campus. The school will also pilot the new Singapore math program in the elementary grades and the Second Step conflict-resolution curriculum in grades K-5.
In Foster City, the Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School, formerly the Jewish Day School of the North Peninsula, reopened in January in new facilities at the North Peninsula Jewish Campus. In the coming year, it will consolidate a program of differentiated instruction within each grade, said principal Mervyn Danker. The K-8 school of 200 students will also have two fifth-grade classes for the first time.
Expanded athletics is also on the menu, according to Danker. “We’ve hired the former administrator of [Peninsula Temple] Beth El, Diana Black, to be the new athletic director and a P.E. teacher,” he said. “For the first time we will field sports teams in the middle school and focus on tennis, swimming, flag football, volleyball, basketball and soccer.”
Also on the Peninsula, Gerald Elgarten, principal at the Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, is excited about the new after-school program in robotics for grades 3-4 and the enhanced technology curriculum that will enable middle school students to enter the National Robotics competition sponsored by Legos. The Palo Alto school, which dedicated its new campus in March, has an enrollment of 370 children in grades K-8.
“Midway through the year, we will offer training to other day schools that want to introduce robotics into their curriculum,” said Elgarten. “We will also introduce the use of electronic probes. The students will collect data with the probes and then use an Excel program to produce graphs to be analyzed. The students will simulate real lab experiments as scientists would.”
This year at the Oakland Hebrew Day School, a K-8 school with 130 students, there is a focus on teaching writing in both general and Judaic studies, said principal Mark Shinar.
The school also hired an admissions director, Melanie Marcus, and recruited four educators from New York not only to teach, but one will also “implement and run extensive after-school programs that will be solidly academic,” said Shinar.
The Contra Costa Jewish Day School in Lafayette will have its first middle school class. This year the middle school will add a math-science specialist, Mitch Slater, said principal Dean Goldfein.
“We have also added three specialists for art, music and drama,” said Goldfein. The school has 65 students, has more than doubled the number of incoming kindergarteners to 15, and will move to a permanent site in Walnut Creek in 2007.
In San Jose, Yavneh Day School in San Jose, with
130 students in grades K-5, is welcoming Lori Abramson, formerly of Temple Sinai in Oakland, as the new
principal. Currently, Abramson and the staff are developing new programs for the fall.
Yavneh plans to be a full K-8 school by the fall of 2006. The first sixth-grade class begins this fall, said Shelley Leveson, a member of the school’s board. The middle school program will utilize Integrated Thematic Instruction, which cuts across subject lines to link real-life issues with academic and societal skills, such as economics, demographics and statistics, writing and social activism.
Two new programs will welcome students at the Eitz Chaim Academy in Los Gatos, said Chanie Lapin, director of the K-8 school that has 40 children and is young and growing.
“One program is in creative movement and music that we will incorporate into the curriculum,” said Lapin. “And the other one is an advanced P.E. program that will emphasize tennis and volleyball.
While Eitz Chaim adheres to the tenets of Orthodox Judaism, Lapin said, the school recognizes that “Orthodox Judaism has varying colors and ours are more rainbow-like. We are very open to the modern world.”
At Brandeis Hillel Day School, with campuses in San Francisco and Marin serving 560 students, a number of projects are in the works.
“In San Francisco there will be $500,000 of capital improvements done as a result of increased class size,” said head of school, Rabbi Henry Shreibman. “There will be a new art room and new space for after-school programs. And there will be innovations in drama and music as we expand the performing arts.”
The Marin campus has a new middle school coordinator, Johanna Zaberick, and a new P.E. teacher, Holly Turner, according to Alan Vann Gardner, head of campus. The middle school will also integrate social justice and service- learning projects into the academic curriculum.
Meanwhile in Palo Alto, Rabbi Yosef Levin, acting headmaster at the Torah Academy, will turn over those responsibilities to Rabbi Shmuel Volovick from Montreal, who is in the process of completing his education degree.
The academy offers 60 students in nursery to eighth grade a full day of Jewish and secular studies. “We are now working towards applying for accreditation as a full day school through the Central Chabad Committee,” he said.
The school is currently in trailers behind the Chabad Center and is looking for better interim space until it can fund a permanent site, Levin said.
Next spring the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School in Sunnyvale will begin major renovations, said headmaster Rabbi Avi Schochet. In the works are a new administrative block, a media center/library that will also house an art center, a computer center and a music center.
In addition, the school will also build a chapel. The school has 270 students from pre-K to eighth grade.
The school will also expand its after-school programs to include the study of Mishnah and Talmud, as well as music, art and drama, Schochet said. “There were also be a chess club open to children starting in the first grade.”