Private schools partner to offer Jewish studies

By Ashley Livingston

Friday, Dec. 5, 2008 | midnight

Solomon Schechter Day School and Alexander Dawson School will embark on a unique partnership for the 2009 school year that will allow Jewish students to take a portion of their supplemental religious classes on Dawson's campus.

Beginning in the 2009-10 school year Dawson will add Hebrew to its world language program.

The school will also begin an experimental program with a select group of Schechter graduates.

Housed inside Temple Beth Sholom in Summerlin, Schechter educates kindergarten through fifth grade, while Dawson, which is less than a mile away, educates preschool through eighth grade.

As part of the experimental program, any of the 13 students who graduate from the current fifth grade class at Schechter and choose to go on to Dawson will be allowed to leave Dawson during the last period of the school day to continue with their Judaic studies at Schechter.

Schechter head of school Jon Mitzmacher said as it's all experimental at this point, he's not really sure what to expect.

"This kind of relationship between a Jewish day school and secular school is almost unheard of," he said.

Mitzmacher said that traditionally, Jewish children will take Jewish education classes two days a week after school, one day of which is spent learning Hebrew and the other is spent learning about Jewish culture.

The new relationship with Dawson will allow the students who graduated from Schechter last year to not have to spend any time after school partaking in supplemental religious studies.

And it will allow all other Jewish students to take the language portion of their religious studies at Dawson and then only have to devote one night a week to their supplemental religious studies to study Jewish culture.

Dawson head of school Michael Imperi said the changes will serve the broader community.

"In an educational community we should try to seek mutually beneficial relationships with other schools," he said. "I fully understood their challenges and it just made sense to me that it was a perfect fit."

The innovative idea also came at a time when Dawson was seeking to expand its already extensive language program.

The school currently offers Latin, Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese.

Beginning next year Mitzmacher will supply the curriculum and supervise the teacher for the Hebrew language class at Dawson.

He said the beauty of the collaboration is that it allows the Schechter students to flow into a fully developed middle school while at the same time continue with Jewish programs.

Ashley Livingston can be reached at 990-8925 or [email protected].