Inside a Hebrew Public school.
Shalom, charter school?
A nonprofit that launches modern-Hebrew-language public schools is hoping New Haven gets a chance to offer that greeting.
The New York-based nonprofit, Hebrew Public, is working to finish an application to the state to launch a charter school in New Haven in fall 2024 with a dual English-modern Hebrew linguistic curriculum as well as a focus on global citizenship.
Connecticut currently has 21 charter schools. If approved, this would be the first with a focus on teaching a specific language, according to Connecticut Department of Education spokesperson Eric Scoville.
The New Haven school would start with kindergarten and first grades with the plan to add one grade each subsequent year up to eighth, according to Hebrew Public President & CEO Jon Rosenberg.
Hebrew Public has helped create 11 similar pre-K‑8 schools in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, D.C., Minnesota, and California. It manages four of those schools.
The schools are taxpayer-supported and include students of diverse racial and economic backgrounds. They don’t teach religion.
Rosenberg.
“Our schools are public schools. They’re not Jewish schools,” Rosenberg said in an interview with the Independent.
“People often get confused when they see the word Hebrew in the name and hear that we teach modern Hebrew. They get confused in a way that they don’t if they see Mandarin or Spanish or French. They get more confused with Hebrew because they have heard of things like ‘Hebrew School’ or the natural tendency to conflate Hebrew with Judaism.”
The nonprofit’s schools aims to promote “diversity of all types” that brings “people together who would not normally encounter each other and not normally … understand each other,” said Rosenberg, who previously worked as a legal aid lawyer and a staffer at Edison Schools and at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, among other posts, before beginning his current post eight years ago.
“Part of our belief in diversity is in linguistic diversity. We are believers that the idea of being bilingual or multilingual is a real asset in the 21st century. Learning about another language and another culture is a way of opening one’s eyes to all sorts of issues of difference, how to resolve complex issues, how to have empathy [for people] who come from different backgrounds or different perspectives, how to walk in someone else’s shoes.
“You need only look around at what’s happening in our country and in our world where people are talking past each other, where people are in isolated ideological bubbles, where segregation is increasing in public schools in the United States, to see there’s a need for what we do.”
Why Hebrew? Rather than, say, Spanish or Mandarin?
“Modern Hebrew is a unique language with ancient roots in Near East culture, as well as a fascinating case of an ancient language that was revived in modern times, and is today at the heart of a culture that bridges Europe and Asia, East and West,” Rosenberg said. “Hebrew is also an entry point to other Semitic languages, including Arabic. And it is the language of a burgeoning number of technology and innovation companies founded in Israel or by Israelis.”
He said the organization, which receives support from the Peter & Carmen Lucia Buck Foundation, decided to pursue a New Haven school “because we think we can bring something of value to the city and the community and the array of public school choices. The request for proposals from the state, which emphasizes models of integration and foreign language instruction, presented a great opportunity to do this.”
Rosenberg offered responses to objections other charter school projects have faced or that his project might encounter in Connecticut:
• Objections to charter schools in general: Rosenberg said his organization sees these schools as an additional choice for parents, not a knock on other schools. “I’m not a believer for the most part in things like vouchers, but I’m a big believer in public school choice. Families should not be stuck with a single option of a neighborhood-based zoned elementary school. They should have an ecosystem of options.” He has spent time checking out New Haven’s Common Ground High School and sees that as a model; he envisions having Hebrew Public becoming a feeder K‑8 for that environmental-themed high school.
• Objections to government support for a Jewish-themed school: He said the network’s other schools have a wide range of students, from African-Americans and Jews and Russian-Americans in Brooklyn.
• Concerns about competition from private religious Jewish day schools: “The model is fundamentally different. A Jewish day school is a religious institution. We don’t have anything religious in our programming. We don’t have any intention to pull students away from a Jewish day school. We have not seen negative impact on Jewish day schools” in other cities where the organization has launched charter schools.
The application to the state is due Dec. 1. A state board of ed team then evaluates all applications for new charters. In some cases the commissioner interviews the applicants. The public gets to weigh in at a hearing. The commissioner makes a recommendation. Then the State Board of Ed votes within 90 days of receiving the application on whether or not to approve it.
As it completes its application to the state, Hebrew Public is also assessing how much community support would exist for it.
One New Haven rabbi, Eric Woodward of Congregation Beth El Keser Israel, said he’d rather see a dual-language school focus on, say, Spanish rather than Hebrew.
“I speak Hebrew and love the Hebrew language, but I don’t think there is a value generally for people in New Haven to learn Hebrew,” Woodward stated. “I don’t think it’s right to prioritize Hebrew instruction over Spanish instruction – we need to see the diversity that this city already has and lift it up in our schools.
We have our own thriving ecosystem of Jewish education here in New Haven, and I’m worried that this school – which hasn’t been sought after or asked for by the Jewish community, but rather comes from an out-of-town non-Jewish organization – will upset that balance and threaten the jobs of our teachers.”
Woodward added that he fears that “this charter school is, like too many others, a regressive step away from public education, which needs our support more than ever. And I’m worried, too, at a time of rising anti-Semitism, that Jews will be blamed for this interposition into the New Haven educational field -– when the New Haven Jewish community has not asked for this school.”
Sounds like it would be a public school that predominantly caters to one religion.