From The Jewish Week:

Miami — Last spring, when the financially struggling Greenfield Day School announced it was closing and the National Ben Gamla Charter School Foundation moved to obtain its building, what followed could have been an episode of "Extreme Makeover: School Edition."

Over the summer, the one-story facility on a large and well-appointed suburban campus owned by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, was quickly transformed from Jewish day school to Hebrew charter school: mezuzahs were ripped out, walls were painted, new computers were purchased with funds from a federal startup grant, and all religious symbols were either removed or covered.

Read the full article in The Jewish Week...

From The Jewish Week:

The emergence of Hebrew charter schools — publicly funded schools that teach Hebrew language and aspects of Jewish culture — has been a controversial development in recent years. Required by law to be open to all regardless of religion or ethnicity, and prohibited from promoting religion, these tuition-free schools nonetheless have drawn scrutiny from church-state watchdogs, as well as Jewish leaders concerned they could draw students away from Jewish day schools.

Plus, with a variety of organizers, sponsors and agendas, not all of whom agree on the definition of "Hebrew charter school," the field is diverse. Here are some of the latest developments from this fast-moving field.

Read the full article in The Jewish Week...

From The New York Times:

In a rare display of bipartisanship, the House approved a bill on Tuesday supporting the expansion of charter schools, the first part of a legislative package planned by Republicans to carry out a piecemeal rewrite of the main federal law on public education, No Child Left Behind.

The bill, passed Tuesday by a vote of 365 to 54, tweaks an existing federal grant program that provides start-up money for new charter schools — currently about $250 million— and adds some quality control provisions.

Read the full article in The New York Times...

From The Jewish Daily Forward:

Every morning at the CommuniKids Preschool in northwest Washington, D.C., children are greeted with hola, not hello, and they banter and sing in Spanish rather than English. The preschool has another site in Northern Virginia where parents can choose immersion in French as well as Spanish.

At the French Maternal School in Georgetown, 2- to 5-year-olds learn entirely en français. Later on, students who want to continue foreign language immersion can opt for the Washington International School, which is known both for its linguistic prowess and lofty tuition fees, or apply to one of the city’s few bilingual public schools.

Read the full article at The Jewish Daily Forward...

From The Jewish Week:

A Hebrew charter school that was to open this fall in Englewood, serving the largely Orthodox communities of that northern New Jersey city and neighboring Teaneck, has postponed its launch by a year, families of prospective students learned last week.

In an email message, the Shalom Academy Charter School announced that the State Department of Education granted the school “a planning year to open in September 2012 instead of 2011.”

Read the full article in The Jewish Week...

From The Jewish Week:

Santa Clarita, Calif. — “How do you say ‘cheerleader’ in Hebrew?”

The question comes in the middle of a beginning Hebrew class at Albert Einstein Academy for Letters, Arts and Sciences, a new charter school in this affluent Los Angeles suburb in the canyons northeast of the San Fernando Valley.

Nehama Meged, a Jerusalem native who has been teaching Hebrew for almost 30 years, pauses a moment before answering, “I don’t think we have cheerleaders in Israel.”

Read the full article in The Jewish Week...

From The Jewish Week:

Soon after Jason “Yitzi” Flynn transferred his 10-year-old son from theRosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey to Teaneck’s Thomas Jefferson Middle School this fall, the phone calls started coming in.

Local Orthodox parents — sometimes as many as eight in one week — would call, wanting to know how his son was adjusting to public school, were the teachers good, was he managing to continue his Jewish learning, did he still have friends from yeshiva?

Read the full article at The Jewish Week...

From The LA Times:

Not long after excoriating the local teachers union, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is taking charter schools to the woodshed as well, saying they need to take on bigger challenges such as turning around low-performing schools and educating greater numbers of disabled students and English-language learners.

In a speech, prepared for delivery at a state charter schools conference in San Diego on Wednesday morning, Villaraigosa offers a milder rebuke than the one he delivered to the union in December. But the occasion was carefully chosen to drive home his points. Villaraigosa will be accepting an award as the “elected official of the year,” according to his office.

Read the full article at The LA Times...

From The Jewish Week:

Just weeks after Shalom Academy, a proposed Hebrew charter school serving the heavily Jewish suburbs of Englewood and Teaneck won New Jersey state approval, an application has been submitted for a Hebrew charter serving another major Jewish population hub, the Upper West Side.

Harlem Hebrew, a school modeled on Brooklyn’s year-and-a-half-old Hebrew Language Academy Charter School, would be located in Manhattan’s Community School District 3, which runs from 59th Street to West 122nd Street, incorporating all of the Upper West Side and about one-third of Harlem.

Read the full article at The Jewish Week...

From The Jewish Week:

The application for a controversial Hebrew charter school in Englewood, N.J., includes letters of support from two prominent Orthodox pulpit rabbis, as well as from several other high-profile Jewish leaders.

Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO for kashrut at the Orthodox Union and spiritual leader of Englewood’s Shomrei Emunah, contributed a letter of support that was part of Shalom Academy’s 2010 charter application, as did Rabbi Shmuel Goldin of Congregation Ahavath Torah. 

Read the full article at The Jewish Week...