March 5, 1999/17 Adar 5759, Vol. 51, No. 23
Choice schoolsParochial high schools attract Jewish studentsVICKI CABOT
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 High school students from Brophy and Xavier College Prep rehearse a scene from an upcoming production of "Fiddler on the Roof." Giles Chandler is playing Motel; Sara Remick (center) is portraying Chava; and Amanda Perry is Tzeitel. |
At the same time, just three miles north, Ryan Rakow wraps the leather strips of his tefillin, phylacteries, around his arm for shacharit, morning prayers, at the new Phoenix Preparatory Community High School.
The daily rites at the downtown girls' Catholic high school, with its view of the imposing dome of adjacent St. Francis Xavier Church, and those at the Jewish day school, housed at the Phoenix Chabad-Lubavitch Center, represent very different religious orientations. Yet, decisions by Jewish parents to enroll their children in private, parochial school - Catholic or Jewish - reflect shared concerns about a host of issues that impact their children's education and development, ranging from academic excellence to discipline, cost and class size.
Religious affiliation is for some families a primary consideration. For others, it may be a contingent condition they accept to get the education they want for their child(ren). As public and private school options proliferate, bolstered by the charter school movement with its host of specialized, state-supported schools, as well as by recent state legislative and court action expected to make private school education more widely available through scholarships - religious schools may move to the forefront of school choice.
Academic excellence is usually the reason why parents choose a particular school. For Janis Harris, whose two sons are Brophy Preparatory High School graduates and whose daughter, Jill Auslander, is a Xavier senior, the decision was predicated on the schools' academic reputation.
"I was looking for a school with an emphasis on education," says Harris.
Brophy, one of four Catholic high schools in the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, is operated by the Jesuit order, known for its intellectual and philosophical focus.
"Who could be more devoted and dedicated to education than the Jesuits?" she says. "They made a difference in my kids lives." Her son Jay is now in his first year of law school at the University of Arizona, and son Jamie is a junior at Tulane University in New Orleans.
According to Mary Catherine Keating, assistant superintendent of education for the diocese, local Catholic high schools have a total enrollment of 3,801 students, 22 percent of whom are non-Catholics. Acceptance priority is given to Catholic applicants.
The diocese does not track its admissions by specific religious denomination, says Keating, when asked about the number of Jewish students.
Keating notes that the proportion of non-Catholic students has "been constant" over the last few years, and that appreciably fewer non-Catholics attend the diocese's 23 elementary and seven preschools than its secondary schools. Meantime, the diocese is gearing up for growth, with two new elementary schools set to open by the year 2001.
 Phoenix Preparatory Community High School student Ryan Rakow works on a bar graph on one of the school's many desktop computers in its state-of-the-art computer lab. |
"The tax credit is wonderful for parents and families," Keating says, noting that Catholic high school tuition ranges from $3,520 to $5,150 for Catholic students, whose tuition is subsidized by the Catholic congregations in the diocese to which they belong. For those whose families are not members of a Catholic parish, tuition is $6,500.
Individual high school and diocesan sholarship funds provide additional aid for needy students.
Small classes and a nurturing environment are often what attract parents to private, religious schools. Michael Rakow says that is part of the appeal of Phoenix Prep. Two older Rakow children are Central High School graduates; youngest son Ryan is a sophomore at the new school.
"There's a real commitment to academic excellence," says Rakow of the fledgling institution, which opened last fall with 10 students and has now doubled its enrollment.
"There are few students in each class - there's no room to hide," he says.
On a recent afternoon, six boys, five in kipot and one in a baseball cap, paired off to wrestle with a wrenching hypothetical situation posed by history teacher Robert Templin, who also serves as academic principal of the school. In the science lab, another young man, the sole student in the class, was bent over a microscope intently studying a slide, while a teacher looked over his shoulder. In the adjacent computer lab, outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment donated by a benefactor, three other youngsters were doing on-line research.
Rabbi Zalman Levertov, school director and the moving force behind the enterprise, says he founded the school because of a perceived need in the community.
"The public school system is not what it used to be," he says. "People (were looking for) the academics, for the safety, for the smallness. There were families who wanted a Jewish school and didn't want to send their children out of town."
Tuition at Phoenix Prep is $6,500 per year. Only Jewish students are admitted. Scholarships are available and "no Jewish child is turned away," says Levertov.
Plans for an independent, dual-track Jewish community high school also are underway in the Valley. An extensive needs assessment study was completed several months ago, a board has been formed and a headmaster hired, according to Deborah Harris, chairwoman of the Jewish Community High School board. Lauriston Cone, currently assistant principal of the Orthodox Maimonides Day School in Brookline, Mass., has been retained as headmaster. Additional professional staff will be added in the coming months and a location determined. Projected opening is September 2000, says Harris.
Ryan Rakow says he likes Phoenix Prep because of the "Jewish atmosphere."
"It is just so much more comfortable," he says of his new school. The youngster attended public elementary schools and spent his freshman year at the Arizona School for the Arts, a charter high school. He became bar mitzvah at Beth El Congregation.
Ryan Rakow says he loves the Judaic content at Phoenix Prep - 2-1/2 hours each morning - and reports that in just one semester, his Jewish knowledge has increased exponentially. His father, Michael Rakow, notes that Ryan can now lead Shabbat services and is immersed in the study of Torah, Mishnah and Gemorrah. Rakow calls Judaic Studies Director Rabbi Laibel Blotner "the crown jewel" of the school.
The elder Rakow has been studying with Chabad Rabbi Don Hayman, and the family now belongs to the congregation there. Other students in the school come from families who are not affiliated with the Orthodox movement, and some do not follow a religious lifestyle.
Jan Klein, whose son Max Hazell is a freshman at Phoenix Prep, was affiliated with a Reform congregation, and her son was educated and became bar mitzvah there. Dissatisfaction with a charter middle school and nearby public high school led the family to Phoenix Prep. Klein admits that initially she was intimidated by the Orthodox affiliation.
"There was some fear," she says during a casual conversation in the school library, where she is volunteering her time. "I was worried that (the rabbis) would come up to Max and ask him to put on tefillin."
During his six months at the school, Hazell has indeed learned how to daven using borrowed tefillin at school, meanwhile surfing the Internet to price them.
Klein says she does not keep a kosher home, nor is the family Sabbath-observant. And she says that the family is comfortable with their choice of school. "The rabbis will say, 'Do the best you can. Shoot for the ideal.' But it doesn't make you feel bad if you are (not observant)."
Levertov says that the school atmosphere is accepting. "We don't force children to change their way of life or impose anything on them," he says, noting that few of the students live in Orthodox homes.
The school has separate classes for boys and girls. Boys wear kipot and girls wear long skirts. While the facility is kosher, students bring their own dairy lunches.
Klein says that it is the atmosphere of the school based on Jewish values, which seek to infuse everyday life with respect, which is most appealing. "I think my son is learning to be more reverent about things," she observes.
Harris, whose children attended Catholic high school, agrees that a religious atmosphere is enriching.
Xavier has daily prayers and religion classes, as well as holiday observances and periodic school-wide Masses. Auslander says that as a freshman she was apprehensive about the religious requirements, but quickly became comfortable with the routine. Religion classes became a means of learning about others - and herself.
"I think you learn a lot about yourself in any theology class when you are learning about God," she says. And rather than questioning her Judaism, Auslander says, her sense of Jewish identity became stronger.
"It helped the kids grow," says her mother, Jan Harris, of the children's high school experiences. "It helped them see the world in terms of others."
There was no effort to impose Catholicism, but rather the schools taught an underlying respect for all religious traditions, Harris says. "They (the religious education teachers) found it admirable if you have a religion and adhere to it."
Yet while there was never any pressure to participate in religious observance, Auslander alludes to some discomfort with holiday observances. "Around Christmas time it can get uncomfortable," she says, "when they do the tree lighting ceremony and caroling and the whole school participates."
While most of her school friends are not Jewish, Auslander, who attended Hebrew school and was confirmed at Temple Beth Israel, goes to the Phoenix High School of Jewish Studies (a.k.a. Hebrew High) and participates in activities with Beth El Congregation United Synagogue Youth.
Asked if there were a Jewish community equivalent of Brophy or Xavier - a model to which the nascent independent Jewish community high school and Phoenix Prep aspire in terms of rigorous academics - both Auslander and her mother said it would certainly be a consideration.
"I'd be interested," says Auslander, who confides that Jewish student population has been a factor in her college search.
"Yes" answers her mother. "If it were a Brophy."