Legal Clips, [September 2007]A Florida charter school may resume teaching in Hebrew, three weeks after the lessons were halted over concerns the Jewish faith was seeping into public classrooms, the Broward County school board has voted. Board members say close monitoring of the country's first Hebrew-language charter school is still necessary, but that its administrators have cleared up major concerns. The school district will work with the Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood to create training programs for teachers and board members to ensure the separation of church and state, says Schools Superintendent James Notter. Lesson plans will be submitted monthly for district review. "We have asked this charter school to do a lot of different things," says school board chairwoman Beverly Gallagher. "As far as I can see, they have done everything that we have asked them." The school can teach about the Jewish faith, but cannot advocate it. "We never considered crossing that line," says school founder Peter Deutsch. Ben Gamla's roughly 400 students in kindergarten through eighth grades follow the state curriculum, but also are to take a Hebrew language course. One of their core subjects is to be taught bilingually as well. Mr. Deutsch plans additional Ben Gamla locations in South Florida and in New York and Los Angeles.
Raleigh News & Observer By Matt Sendensky (Associated Press)
[Editor’s Note: For background, see below.]
NSBA School Law pages on Hebrew charter school dispute