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March 26, 2009
A petition to establish a Hebrew language and culture charter school in East Brunswick has touched off a split in the local Jewish community.
Those trying to establish the school say it will provide a top-notch education while teaching Hebrew as a second language.
Opponents contend it may hurt enrollment at existing day schools or synagogue religious schools and even force day schools to close.
With similar attempts under way in Englewood and Brooklyn, the proposal is bound to stir debate about church-state issues and whether charter schools offer a viable alternative to pricey Jewish day school education.
Charter schools are considered public schools and are precluded by law from teaching religion.
Those looking to form the Hatikvah International Academy Charter School said its objective is “to develop inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young citizens in order to promote a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.” The proposed school would include kindergarten through eighth grade (through second grade only in the first year).
Its website describes its educational philosophy. It does not refer to Jewish or religious identity.
“We have spoken to people who attended partial [language] immersion elementary schools, and they became completely fluent in the languages they studied,” said Danna Nezaria of East Brunswick, a mother of four and one of the about 10 founders of the proposed charter school. “The more we learned about partial immersion programs and the more we learned about the benefits of learning Hebrew, the more we thought that this could be a tremendous benefit to our community that was not available.”
Nezaria and others who support establishment of the school — she declined to give specifics on the number and identity of fellow supporters until after the March 31 filing of the proposal — have started an online petition, www.hatikvahcharterschool.com, for those in favor of the proposal.
New applications for charter schools are due at the state Department of Education by March 31.
Department spokesman Richard Vespucci said the founders of a prospective charter school must persuade the state commissioner of education that they can offer a “viable alternative academic choice” and can operate the school on a sound fiscal basis and within state and federal laws and regulations.
If approved, the school can engage only in activities for which it had been approved or the state can revoke the charter.
“The basic guideline, allowed through previous court cases, is that you can teach about religion, but you can’t teach religion,” said Vespucci. “You can teach about the language and the history, culture, and religious influence on the language in the public schools, but you can’t inculcate religious beliefs.”
Impact on schools
But the language in an on-line petition opposing the school indicates worries not about church-state issues but rather the impact on existing day and synagogue schools.
As of March 23, the opposition petition contained 168 signatures — many of them members of the Jewish community — toward its sponsors’ goal of collecting 300 signatures.
On the petition supporting the charter school, names and comments were kept hidden.
Stephanie Granot of East Brunswick, the sponsor of the opposition petition, doesn’t think such a school could coexist with the Solomon Schechter Day School of Raritan Valley in East Brunswick, which her children attend.
“It would force closure of that school,” she said.
She added that the charter school would siphon children from area Conservative and Reform supplementary schools, pull Jewish children from the East Brunswick public school system, and adversely affect Orthodox Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva in Edison and the Shalom Torah academies in Monmouth and Mercer counties.
Granot downplayed the idea of “a reverse Hebrew school,” where Jewish subjects would be taught before and after school at an extra cost, claiming the day would be too long.
Those opposing Hatikvah also contend that Hebrew language is so much a part of the Jewish religion it would be difficult to teach it without including Judaism. Virtually all of the school’s students would be Jewish, they point out.
Opponents also say supporters have misled some parents into believing they could get an education similar to that in a day school without the high tuition costs.
“I have no objection to a charter school if it operates within the law,” said Schechter president Mickey Kaufman. “If someone convinces the government there is a need for a public school that teaches Hebrew, that’s fine. But if people think — ‘nod, nod, wink, wink’ — they’re going to save $14,000 and get a day school education for free in a public school setting, they don’t understand what a charter school is all about.”
Schechter head of school Dr. Howard Rosenblatt said a Jewish day school provides “an integration of language, culture, and ethics, [which] are inextricable and essentially the core values of Judaism.”
“I think the worst thing that could happen is that they could take enough students to be harmful to both the synagogue schools and day schools and not give anything equitable in place,” he said. “That would be more destructive than helpful.”
Rosenblatt said Schechter was doing well despite the economy, with increasing enrollment in the lower grades, new facilities for science and computers, and new programming. He said the school had met all its financial scholarship requests and is going into next year with a balanced budget and no debt.
Educational options
Nezaria says the goal of the charter school is to benefit the community.
“We are not trying to start a school to hurt anyone or any institution. We want to enhance the educational options in our community,” she said. “We believe in educational excellence and options in education.”
Nezaria said she expected the school’s curriculum to be reflective of the local community and its student body to be made up of a variety of ethnicities and religions.
“Knowledge of Hebrew can be a tremendous benefit in this new world economy,” she said, citing the work of the New Jersey-Israel Commission as just one example.
“We have done nearly $12 billion in trade with Israel since 1991,” said Nezaria. “This goes to show that Hebrew is not limited to religion. Israel is second only to the United States in having the greatest number of companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange. Hebrew language is for anyone who wants to be able to fully participate in many aspects of our economy in which Israel has a role.”
However, the cost of day school education — at Schechter around $14,000 a year for elementary and middle school — is undoubtedly an issue for some pushing for the school.
Some of those signing the pro-charter school petition were Orthodox, according to individuals involved on both sides of the issue.
Abe Schwartzbard, the immediate past president of RPRY and a member of its executive committee, said he was not surprised that Orthodox parents would be interested in the charter school.
“A day school education is expensive and it is basically a huge sacrifice to pay that tuition bill,” he said. “But we have expenses and we have to pay our teachers a living wage.”
Schwartzbard said in light of the expense, he encourages parents to explore all options; a very small number of parents, he said, have chosen to send their children to public school for financial reasons.
However, he too had concerns that Talmud, Torah, and Jewish ethics could not be part of a charter school curriculum. Schwartzbard said he planned to bring up the proposed school at the committee’s next meeting.
“If this comes to fruition, and the Orthodox community asks us to run some kind of program after school for these children, I think we would,” he said. “Somebody has to fill that void.”
Rabbi Eliot Malomet of the Highland Park Conservative Temple Congregation Anshe Emeth, who chairs Schechter’s rabbinic advisory committee, says that a charter school will have “devastating consequences for the existing schools by allowing people to choose the lowest common denominator of Jewish education.”
At the same time, he said, families are looking for financial relief.
While there is scholarship money available for the needy at day schools, he said, others who fall somewhere between poor and wealthy “are getting killed” by tuition costs.
“In the absence of wealthy parents or generous schools, people in the middle are being terribly, terribly squeezed,” he said. “This community will have to make some interesting decisions because it is at the breaking point.”
In Englewood, a similar proposal was turned down by the state in October, but a new plan to create a Hebrew language curriculum within that city’s schools is being explored. The curriculum would be supplemented by voluntary after-school classes paid for by parents in space rented from the school district.
The Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School is operating in Hollywood, Fla., and recently a Hebrew charter school was approved in Brooklyn.
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