Checking up on the day-school proposals

Checking up on the day-school proposals

After his proposal to create a Hebrew charter school in Englewood was struck down last year, Raphael Bachrach began exploring the creation of a Hebrew immersion track in a public school, similar to an existing Spanish immersion track the city offers. As reported earlier in this blog and in The Jewish Standard, that proposal has hit some road blocks with the school board.

Bachrach’s wife, Nina, ran for a position on Englewood’s school board in the election earlier this week and despite reports that she received more votes in each of the districts in her home ward than any other candidate, she did not win a spot on the board. Raphael Bachrach is the driving force behind the Hebrew immersion proposal in that city, which has recently stalled. He told me before the election that part of his wife’s reason for running would be to help push the program through the board. After the election, Bachrach said that he is still optimistic that the immersion program can be ready for the 2009-10 school year.

Meanwhile, Bachrach’s application for the Hebrew charter school has been resubmitted for 2010. More on that as it develops.

Elsewhere in Englewood, a committee of parents has created an idea for a low-cost day school or track within an existing day school. The idea has received a lot of commentary (“Continuing the conversation”) in the opinion pages of The Jewish Standard lately. Well, that proposal took another small step forward this week, too. Based on interest expressed at an informational meeting last month, the committee behind the idea is setting up smaller committees to flesh out a proposal.

Per a recent e-mail from the organizers, the committees are:
The education committee: would work on the methods and structure of the education to ensure that quality would not be compromised due to its low cost nature. It would also figure out the appropriate uses of volunteers so as not to impair the quality of the core curriculum.
The budget committee: would go over every line item in the budget to ensure its accuracy and feasibility.
The main committee of concerned parents will deal with everything else, according to the e-mail.

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