Shalhevet to get a second year after all

Cash and cuts cover projected $350,000 deficit

By Mayer Fertig

Issue of July 24, 2009 / 3 Av 5769

Shalhevet High School for Girls will have a sophomore year after all, after parents scrambled to raise $150,000.

The “very generous donations,” and cuts to the bottom line — mostly from an expected lower rent at a new location, and parents’ willingness to carpool rather than incur the expense of school busing — mean that a projected $350,000 deficit seemingly will be covered. 40 girls are expected to attend the 9th and 10th grades in September.

“Contrary to the very wrong and disparaging notion that’s been floating around the community — painting these girls as, really, ‘Poor girls from Brooklyn,’ and worse — it’s those families who came up with the money,” said Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman. He voiced confidence that the school would be able to maintain needed funding through its early years.

Rabbi Friedman had been the Rosh Mesivta of Machon HaTorah and will now head Rambam and Shalhevet together with Rabbi Yotav Eliach. Rambam’s associate principal is Rabbi Peretz Hochbaum. Rabbi Friedman said he expects most of the faculty members who were part of Shalhevet’s first year will return.

Additionally, Rabbi Friedman said, he expects that Mrs. Rookie Billet would join Shalhevet for the 2010-2011 year, as planned. She is currently the principal of Ma’ayanot High School for Girls in Teaneck where she is under contract for one more year. Mrs. Billet was away on vacation at press time.

A combined student body of 210 is expected to attend  Shalhevet and Rambam for the coming year.

Shalhevet had been housed in the Temple Beth El building that HAFTR has leased from the congregation for a number of years. The new location is also within the Five Towns though school officials declined to identify it for the record until a lease could be finalized. That was expected to take place late this week.

The new school appeared to be a goner after just one year. HAFTR trustees, citing financial hardship at their own school, voted two weeks ago to terminate an agreement to cover deficits suffered during Shalhevet’s start-up phase. That deal had been part of the larger, three-year-old Machon HaTorah arrangement that partnered HAFTR with Rambam Mesivta.

While Shalhevet will apparently remain open, the Machon HaTorah concept became a casualty after Rambam officials said their school would no longer participate in the partnership.

In an interview with The Jewish Star last week, Yaacov Gross, the president of Rambam, criticized HAFTR for backing out of its commitment to Shalhevet and claimed that the actual deficit was a “tiny, tiny number.”

While Rabbi Friedman and Yaacov Gross had publicly professed shock at the HAFTR decision and implied they had been blindsided, Rabbi Friedman acknowledged Monday that discussions had been ongoing about HAFTR’s ability to continue to cover the new school’s deficit.

“There were discussions that I was involved in as late as an hour or so before the board meeting with proposals to keep the school open,” he said.  Immediately afterward he began to seek placements for his students at other schools but a number of Shalhevet parents rallied.

“Parents were really passionate and I was honestly shocked, pleasantly shocked. I said if you’re going to put in these efforts I’m totally supportive of it but I don’t want anyone to be disappointed if we can’t make it work.  The last thing we want to see is for the girls to lose out. It reminded me kind of being out-of-town and everyone saying, ‘Let’s build a shul. I’ll do the plumbing; I’ll run a bake sale; I do roofs,” Rabbi Friedman said.

One parent even offered to fill in as the school nurse.

“And you’re talking about a school in existence for all of one year with 15 girls. That commitment was there from this group and the incoming group,” he added, particularly financially. “They came to bat because there was a need for it ... No one has the attitude ‘I’m paying my tuition, don’t bother me’ — on the contrary. It’s something unique — a wonderful group of girls with a fantastic group of parents.”