Rabbi Chaim Tropper and Rabbi Rachmiel Steinberg are well known educators in the Los Angeles community and the founders of Yeshivas Ohev Shalom (yeshivasohevshalom@gmail.com). Rabbi Tropper previously was the principal of Ner Aryeh high school. Rabbi Steinberg is currently the dean of JETS vocational school. In this article, they describe how their new school teamed up with a public, online school, to provide a full general studies program at no cost to the parents.

We are living in very difficult economic times, and everyone is looking for ways to cut back on their expenses. Unfortunately one of the first places where families cut spending is in the area of education. With the price of private Jewish schools ranging from ten to twenty five thousand dollars a year, per child, savings in education have an immediate impact on a family’s ability to survive in these trying times. It is very sad to see so many Jewish students compromising a proper Jewish education in a Jewish environment and finding themselves facing the difficult challenges of public school, just because the tuition cost for a proper Jewish education is out of their reach. It is time to be innovative, and creative to find some way to lower the cost of schooling, without compromising the standards of education.

The great scholar Rabbi David Leibowitz, who founded the Rabbinical Seminary of America in the early 1930s, felt that Jewish day schools were too costly, and it would be much more efficient if Jewish children went to afternoon Hebrew schools after attending public school. As times changed, and the public educational system developed new challenges, it was no longer practical for the average Jewish child to be enrolled in public school. However, through modern technology and the development of ‘virtual online schools’, this forgotten option is once again a viable reality. After extensive research we found that we could run a Jewish school with a full secular program at a much lower cost since our teachers, supplies (books, computers, lab equipment), and curriculum were supplied free of charge by our government. We opened Yeshivas Ohev Shalom in September with a small experimental group, and over the past five months we’ve seen tremendous success. Our plan was to start with a small control group of high school students, and once we perfected the program, it would become a model for other schools throughout the country.

Yeshivas Ohev Shalom consists of a regular full scale Judaic studies program, and then the secular studies are done through a local fully state accredited virtual academy. Each student has his own laptop computer and works independently on their individualized, tailor-made program. Whereas many smaller Jewish schools (especially in the Orthodox sector) are unable to offer an extensive broad secular curriculum, our school accesses the full public school course list with all honors and AP courses available. The work is generally done through visual instruction (videos, texts, diagrams, etc.), with weekly live virtual sessions given by the teacher in each subject. At these live sessions the students have the ability to ask questions, interact with other students, and access the virtual blackboard to clarify difficulties they may have with the material. Teachers in all subjects are available daily for the students to discuss and clarify course work via e-mail, instant messaging or over the phone. The students must log in daily to all their subjects and must meet weekly deadlines as they work through the course syllabus. This arrangement allows us to have students of different grade levels working in the same room with a minimal staff of a teacher and a proctor to make sure things are moving along smoothly. This is almost like the proverbial ‘little red school house’ which had all levels of diversified learning in one classroom.

The virtual academy is very pleased with our arrangement. They generally serve individual home school families, which require each family to be dealt with independently. Our school allows them to work through our administration and with a single contact they could communicate with our entire student body. Additionally, whereas most home school students aren’t supervised and struggle to be self motivated to complete their course work, our secular classes are proctored and disciplined, which ensures the success of all the students. The virtual academy is very accommodating of the Jewish calendar, despite conflicts with the public school secular calendar.

Independent study has many educational advantages. Much time wasted on classroom discipline, or repetition for slower learners is avoided, which allows the students to complete much more work in a shorter period of time. Our students are able to have shorter hours in school which gives them more time out of school to relax and explore their hobbies. The students have the ability to tailor their own curriculum to meet their individual needs. The virtual academy is very well equipped with tutors and remedial classes, to help students with learning disabilities grow and develop.

Like any new project, there are bumps along the road that need to be smoothed out. Some students find it difficult to get acclimated to a computerized system of testing and submitting assignments, and we are working on adding more orientation sessions for our incoming ninth grade next year. It is also a challenge for many students to transition from a Jewish day school education to the online public school standard, which is usually more demanding. We are trying to work with the virtual academy to make the initial move more successful and less stressful.

We have already received calls and e-mails from schools around the globe who are interested in seeing our model and learning more about implementing a similar program in their school. Hopefully we will see in the near future many schools adapting a similar model, and once again Jewish education will become affordable for every family.