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Pioneering Mission A Success - The Jewish Week

Birkner, Gabrielle
The Jewish Week
04-22-2005
Solomon Schechter high school in Westchester set to graduate its first
class.

As high school freshman, students in the class of 2005 at Solomon Schechter
School of Westchester took on leadership roles that, at most schools, are
reserved for upperclassmen. They starred in school plays, served as
captains of varsity sports teams and edited the student-run newspaper.

'We were thrust into these positions,' said Rachel Weinberger, 17, a Spring
Valley, N.Y., native who has been accepted into a joint program between
Barnard College and The Jewish Theological Seminary. 'We didn't have older
students to mentor us.'

Nearly four years ago, Weinberger took a leap of faith: She started ninth
grade at a school that for 35 years served only kindergarten to eighth
graders. In June, she and her 55 classmates will become the first graduates
of the Hartsdale-based M. Mac Schwebel Upper School of the Solomon
Schechter School of Westchester.

Einat Kadar of Bedford recalled that initially, some of her peers were
skeptical about the new high school.

'Not many of my friends wanted to come here at first,' said Kadar, 18, who
will begin Brown University in the fall. 'They wanted a normal high school
experience.'

Solomon Schechter seniors may have missed out on emotional homecoming
celebrations and lively football games. They may not have had peer advisors
or existing afterschool activities. Yet many of the soon-to-be graduates
said that being part of the inaugural high school class presented them with
a unique set of opportunities: to establish annual traditions like a
two-month study trip to Israel and a for-credit internship program
stateside; and to build from scratch extracurricular outlets like the
student government, school newspaper, drama club and mock trial team.

When Jackie Grosser entered ninth grade at Solomon Schechter, she said it
felt 'more like an extension of eighth grade than high school.'

'It wasn't until we started our own clubs and groups that things started to
change,' said Grosser, 18, of New City, NY. 'If we had gone to an
established school, we probably wouldn't have started anything. We would
have just joined. ... Now we're setting the tone for all the other grades.'

Added Headmaster Elliot Spiegel, 'There have been many, many firsts here.'

Spiegel, who has worked at the Solomon Schechter in Westchester for 25
years, was a driving force behind the creation of a high school at the
39-year-old institution.

'We filled a gap,' he said. 'The area didn't have a Conservative high
school, and [starting one] was something I believed in very deeply.'

At Schechter, about 60 percent of the eight-hour school day is devoted to
general studies, with the remainder earmarked for Judaic studies and
Hebrew.

The rigorous dual curriculum apparently impressed college admissions
committees. All of the seniors are college-bound, with about a handful
deferring their admission to study or join the military in Israel. The
students have been accepted at more than 75 colleges and universities,
including Harvard, Yale, MIT and various other prestigious private and
public schools.

Heath Einstein, Schechter's director of college counseling, attributed the
success to the caliber of the students and the solid reputation of older
and more established Solomon Schechter high schools.

'Our parents were concerned that their kids were at a disadvantage because
the school was new,' said Einstein, who prepared a school profile that was
sent out with each college application. 'I think, if anything, it worked in
our favor. Colleges see us as a new consumer in the market, and they're
anxious to get off on the right foot with us.'

Schechter's middle and high schools are housed in a pristine
120,000-square-foot Jerusalem stone-like structure located about six miles
from the lower school in White Plains. The facility, completed during the
summer of 2001, features wireless computer labs, television and dance
studios, a darkroom and a gourmet kosher cafeteria. The $35 million campus,
made possible in part by a gift from Westchester resident M. Mac Schwebel,
sits on 25 acres and is outfitted with tennis courts and plentiful athletic
fields.

About 230 students now attend the high school, which draws a number of
students from Bi-Cultural, a community day school in Stamford, Conn.; the
Schechter-affiliated Reuben Gittelman Hebrew Day School in the New City,
N.Y.; and SAR Academy and Kinneret Day School in Riverdale.

In addition, about 10 percent of each freshman class has not previously
attended Jewish schools.

Schechter's Akiva program, paid for with a $200,000 grant from
UJA-Federation of New York, provides remedial Hebrew language and Judaic
studies classes for these students.

Since the high school opened, the proportion of Schechter eighth-graders
who attend Jewish high schools has grown from 25 to more than 65 percent.
Most of these students stay on at Schechter, where high school tuition is
$19,000 annually.

Until 2001 about three-quarters of Schechter's middle-school graduates went
on to private secular high schools. About a quarter of its students
continued at Jewish high schools, which in Westchester and Rockland
counties were uniformly Orthodox institutions.

As a right-leaning Conservative Jew, Jonathan Hack, an 18-year-old from
Riverdale, considered attending an Orthodox high school like Ramaz in
Manhattan or The Frisch School in Paramus, N.J.

'An Orthodox school -- it just wasn't me,' said Hack, who has been accepted
at seven universities in the Northeast. 'Here there's a certain comfort
level.'

Four years after choosing Schechter, Hack said he's content with his
decision and proud to be in the pioneering high school class.

'I feel like I've been a guinea pig for four years,' he said. 'A good
guinea pig.'

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