Leaving its Lathrup Village

home, the Orthodox school

finds shiny new spaces

at a converted synagogue.

LONNY GOLDSMITH

Staff Writer

A

dell Kleid's room at Akiva
Hebrew Day School has a
lot of dust and no pictures
or potted plants. But, she
says, this office-to-be is a major
improvement over her previous quar-
ters, where the dominant decorative
touches were paling yellow walls and a
window air conditioner that effectively
drowned conversation.
Kleid, like the rest of Akiva's staff,
faculty and students, began last week a
long-awaited move from the school's
home of 19 years, the 71-year-old for-
mer Annie Lathrup Elementary School
on Southfield Road in Lathrup Village.
Moving trucks hauled desks and files
and lab equipment to a newly renovat-
ed home, the former Congregation
Beth Achim about three miles away on

12 Mile Road in Southfield.
Lonny Goldsmith can be reached at
(248) 354-6060 ext. 263, or by e-mail
at: lgoldsmith@thejewishnews.com

7/16
1999

6 Detroit Jewish News

bought the Lathrup Village building
There, bright painted walls, fully
for $1.35 million from Akiva, has
carpeted floors and new lockers await .
rented it to a charter school. Akiva
the staff and the 250 students enrolled
had to get out by Wednesday.
for the fall.
Some of the teachers that have
But renovations aren't quite com-
toured their new digs are excited.
plete, and contractors and painters are
"Mentally, it's a total boost," said
still roaming the halls of the converted
Lynne
Farber, a second- and third-grade
Conservative synagogue, adding lights
here and bulletin boards
there.
ay.
a a si ate;
"I'd say they are 90 per-
0 a
n
cent finished," said Michael
Greenbaum, president of
W:
the Orthodox school,
la ,
which provides both secular
A $2.5 million investment in bricks
and Jewish education.
Greenbaum said he expects
and mortar will mean more space and
the work to be done, on
nicer facilities for students and staff.
schedule, by Aug. 1.
Actually, said Rabbi
Karmi Gross, the school's
secular studies teacher, as she cleaned
headmaster, this has been much
the dust off some of her new furniture.
quicker than expected. We're a month
The
school was "old and rundown. A
ahead of where we planned to be."
lot
of
things were on their last leg."
Expediting the process wasn't a
When
the school year ended last
move Akiva leadership had envisioned.
month,
the
teachers braved early summer
But Jeffrey Surnow, the developer who

`..

S .

heat at the old building to box up their
rooms to be moved to the new facility.
"The teachers have been really
wonderful," Kleid said. "This summed
L\
I've seen the teachers all the time,"
cleaning and packing their old rooms.
Gross lauded the way the students and
staff toughed it out at the old building.
"For three-quarters of the year,
the school was tough to be in
and they accomplished amazin,L_,-
things in impossible conditions,"
he said. "In the summer it was
too hot, and in the winter the
heat was difficult to regulate. It
was tough on everybody but the
move will be worth it."
At 50,000 square feet, the new
school is nearly twice the size of
its predecessor. While the syna-
gogue's sanctuary was left nearly
intact, 10 classrooms fill the space the
social hall once occupied. What had
been the religious school wing will
house the early childhood program's
pre-nursery school, nursery and kinder-
garten classes.