Plans for a Hebrew language charter

There are some people in town working on a Hebrew language charter school. The plan is for it to be public (free), not religious and open to all families, not just Jewish people. It's scheduled to open in the fall of 2012.

At first this sounded like a good idea, so I went to the town hall type meeting they had tonight.

The room was filled with Israelis and some non-religious Jewish families. The panel featured a woman who actually writes charters, a representative from the successful Hebrew charter in New York and New Jersey and some local volunteers.

After explaining what a charter school is and watching a video of very diverse kids speaking Hebrew, they went into some details.

1. The school is looking to locate in the Golden Triangle area.
I'm not sure how smart this is, actually. If the organizers want to show that they truly are public and NOT religious, it seems counter-productive to put the school in an area with so many synagogues and Hebrew schools. Also, if they want to attract people from all socio-economic backgrounds, why be located in a place with some of the worst traffic? Will a working mom from City Heights really sit in hours of traffic to have her kid learn Hebrew? But if a good school was put in her neighborhood, she'd probably consider it. Honestly, it seems like the location was selected because so many Israelis live in the area.

2. The charter isn't official.
They are applying to be in San Diego school district, which already has several language charters: Chinese, German, Spanish, Arabic, etc.
So that's a good thing. It seems like the Hebrew one will have the added issue of having to convince the board that the language and the religion are different.

3. They will have 25 to 30 kids in a class with two teachers in a room. Kids will get one hour of Hebrew and the language will be used in other areas, like during math, P.E. and lunch. School day is tentatively 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Priority enrollment may be given to Hebrew speakers. Jewish holidays will not be given preference over secular holidays but there is talk of planning the school year around the Jewish calendar. If kids are not at school, they don't get money from the district, so it makes sense to design a calendar with maximum attendance in mind.

Overall, I like the idea of the school. For me, though, I think that if I'm interested in Hebrew, it's because it's a part of being Jewish, not Israeli. I'm not really sure that I would want to leave religion out of that process. If I was truly interested in a language immersion, I'd pick Spanish. To me Hebrew songs, Hebrew stories, Hebrew names are part of being Jewish, so if thats the route I pick, I'd feel better just going with a traditional Jewish school.

I'm still curious to see how this plays out. By the time Ella is ready for kindergarten, the school will have been running for a year, so I can revisit the issue again later.