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February 16, 2001/Shevet 23, 5761, Vol. 53, No.20
Gan Yeladeem to buy site for school
LEISAH NAMM
Staff Writer
Gan Yeladeem has found a site for its charter school, preschool, camp and synagogue. The organization plans to move from rented space at Temple Kol Ami in Scottsdale to a building now housing the Tesseract Charter School in Phoenix, said Gan Yeladeem Principal Susan Heller.
Timing of the move depends on a bankruptcy hearing for Tesseract, at which Tesseract is expected to "reject their lease" from property owner Educational Properties Investment Inc., Heller said. Gan Yeladeem expects to lease the building back to Tesseract until the end of the school year and to finish the current school year at Kol Ami.
Date of the hearing was not available at press time.
The new lease agreement would include a provision that Congregation Gan Shalom, a synagogue founded last summer by Heller and Gan Yeladeem parents that now serves about 50 families, will use the site weekends for Shabbat services. Gan Shalom plans to start a Sunday religious school once it moves.
Kol Ami will fill the space with its own preschool and the Pardes Jewish Day School's middle school, said Rabbi Charles Herring, spiritual leader at Kol Ami.
Heller said that funds to buy the property were raised with a combination of tuition, loans and fundraisers and that a capital campaign is being planned to raise money for additional building. She would not disclose the purchase amount.
Tesseract Group Inc., which operates private, charter and pre-kindergarten schools in Arizona, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Oct. 6, according to Lucian Spataro, CEO of Tesseract. The company has continued to operate its schools while trying to sell its assets.
Plans for the sale were underway before Tesseract declared bankruptcy. "We've been in escrow on the land and the building since July," Heller said.
Tesseract is located on 3.66 acres at 3916 E. Paradise Lane in Phoenix, 3.9 miles west of Gan Yeladeem's current location near 64th Street and Greenway Road in Scottsdale.
The facility is 14,325 square feet.
This summer's sessions for Camp Kaiyitz, a camp for infants through 10th graders, will start June 4 at the new location.
The Tesseract facility has a pool, covered patios, grass field, basketball court, playground and room for expansion, Heller said. The 13 classrooms are 900 square feet each, larger than the 500-square-foot classrooms at Kol Ami. Expansion would allow the charter school, which has a current enrollment of 90 students, to expand up to 220, Heller said.
Gan Yeladeem: The Looking Glass School, approved as a secular charter school by the Arizona State Board of Education in 1996, teaches kindergarten through seventh grade, with plans to expand to eighth grade in the future, Heller said.
Gan Yeladeem Learning Center and Day School, with a Hebrew and Judaica curriculum for infants through pre-kindergarteners, has 100 children.
Gan Yeladeem will be buying the furniture, fixtures and equipment from Tesseract. Gan Yeladeem owns the playground equipment and furniture in its current location and plans to move it to the new site, Heller said.
Call Gan Yeladeem, 480-922-7236.
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