This Week A Ladder For Learning The Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit, the area's newest Jewish day high school, will open its doors Monday after four years of planning by determined parents, professionals and community leaders. No Longer A Dream DIANA LIEBERMAN Staff Writer T hey are lawyers, doctors, business owners, rabbis, educators, accountants and entrepre- neurs. Regardless of their chosen professions, they have spent the past four years immersed in a time- consuming second job — building a Jewish day high school where none existed before. Founders of the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit, which will open Monday, Aug. 28, at the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Building of the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield, have many reasons for celebration. The school's opening enrollment of about 50 ninth- and 10th-grade students may very well exceed that of any other unaffiliated Jewish day high school in the United States. Students may enroll right up to opening day. The nearest competition to Detroit comes from the New Jewish High School of Greater Boston, in Waltham, Mass. That community high school opened in 1996 with 48 students. The JAMD also has received unprecedented finan- cial support from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, which, combined with other national and local benefactors, has enabled it to lay the kind of thorough groundwork needed for a successful school. (See related story on finances.) Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, headmaster of the Massachusetts school, said the Boston-area federation had provided "nowhere near" the support of the Detroit Federation. "I've gone across the country using Detroit as an example of what the community and federation can do to support day school education," he said. The JAMD is not the Detroit area's first Jewish day high school. However, unlike the others, which range from modern Orthodox to Lubavitch in affiliation, the new school is the first in Michigan to be non-affiliated with any stream of Judaism. - "We have a good cross-section of the different 8/25 2000 6 denominations," said Steven Schanes of West Bloomfield, a member of the JAMD's original steering committee and vice president of the school's newly formed board of directors. "We have a community of about 100,000 Jews," Schanes said. "It's a shame we have had no non- Orthodox option for high school up until this time." THE FIRST STEPS The initial steering committee was made up of parents of children at Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit, a Solomon Schechter day school in Farmington Hills. It serves students in nursery through eighth grade. Schechter schools are affiliated with the Conservative movement. As the dream of a high school neared reality, enthusiasm kept building, Schanes said. Other community members, not affili- ated with Hillel, contributed their time and expertise toward pushing the project over the finish line. "There was never a time we felt it would- n't happen," said Schanes, whose daughter, Lauren, a Hillel graduate, will enter the JAMD as a member of the school's first ninth-grade class. "But it has surpassed our highest expectations as far as the number of stu- dents and the quality of teachers and administrators." For the coming year, best estimates show about 65- 75 percent of the JAMID's inaugural students will be Hillel graduates. About 35.will be ninth-graders, with 15 in the 10th grade. Roughly 90 percent of the stu- dents said they would have gone to public school if this option had not existed, said Rabbi Lee Buckman, head of the school. Jeffrey Garden of West Bloomfield, chair of the ini- tial steering committee since 1996, said he is convinced that, once the school's reputation grows, it will become a primary choice for Jewish eighth-graders. "Many studies in the late 1980s and 1990s show the teen years are crucial in setting up later patterns, thus determining how [the teens] will live their lives," Garden said. "The schools that are out there are look- ing for some way to teach morals and ethics without offending any group of individuals. We are in a unique position as a Jewish school to do that." The JAMD is one of a rapidly growing number of Jewish high schools in the United States that accept students of any Jewish denomination. "Before the 1990s, there were only three that stand out — Hyman Brand in Kansas City, Charles E. Smith in Washington, D.C., and Akiba Hebrew Academy in Philadelphia," said Dr. Leora Isaacs of the New York- based Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA). "If all the schools that are planning to open actually do open, we will have witnessed at least 10 new high schools over the past five years." BUILDING THE SCHOOL Robert Roth of Farmington Hills, who recently took over as president of the JAMD board, said the hiring of Rabbi Buckman as head of- school in April 1999 was "the key point in going from the concept stage to the development stage. "Then we could go into marketing, hiring teachers and finding a space," Roth said. "There have been a lo of pieces that have come together, thanks to the work of a lot of people." Garden said one of the committee's first tasks was commissioning a feasibility study. Soon after, he con- sulted with Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, whose Boston- based New Jewish High School was just about to open "It was Sukkot, and I sat in Rabbi Lehmann's sukka , and asked for his advice," Garden said. "He said, 'Just go ahead and build it.' "So I came back to Detroit and told the steering committee, 'Whatever the study says, go ahead and build it."' For the first year, the JAMD will operate inside the JCC. Four classrooms have been built within existing walls of the former Rooms 150 and 107 on the Center's lower level as well as a conference room, stor- age rooms, large teacher/faculty workroom and lounge and state-of-the-art science lab. In addition, students will use other public areas, such as art, dance and physical education facilities, on scheduled basis.