Private Schools Succeed With Holistic Approaches

It is 10 a.m., and the kindergartners at Tarbut v’Torah Jewish day school in Irvine have finished their morning prayers.

In a sky-lit computer lab, 20 small children don headphones, sign on with their own passwords and tap away quietly at a variety of educational computer programs.

Nearby in a classroom, the other half of the kindergartners are on their feet. Their teacher, Ifat Meltzer, speaks no English; the Hebrew program at this school follows a full-immersion philosophy from the first day. The children sing and dance in response to her animated instructions, shaking different parts of their bodies as they recite the words for legs and eyes and ears.

The sense of pride at Tarbut v’Torah is tangible. Pride in the school’s sparkling new facilities, pride in a shared Jewish heritage, and pride that the school was honored with a prestigious Blue Ribbon award this year from the U.S. Department of Education.

Balancing religious and cultural studies with a rigorous academic program is the unique challenge that parochial schools face. But for a handful of schools in Orange County, it is a recipe for success.

In the last four years, only four of the more than 130 private schools in the county have captured the Blue Ribbon--the education department’s highest honor. Three of the four winners are religious schools.

The award is given in alternate years to elementary and high schools. This year, Blue Ribbons were awarded to elementary schools.

In addition to Tarbut v’Torah, Orange County private school honorees have included Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, which won last year, and the Hebrew Academy, on the border between Huntington Beach and Westminster, which received the award in 1997 for its elementary school program. The only nonreligious school to win the award in recent years is Heritage Oak Private Elementary School in Yorba Linda, which was honored in May along with Tarbut v’Torah.

The predominance of religiously affiliated schools on the list of winners should come as no surprise; they apply in dramatically larger numbers than secular private schools.

Eighty-five percent of private schools nationwide are religiously affiliated. And 82% of the private institutions that applied for this year’s award were religious schools, according to Joe McTighe, executive director of the Council for American Private Education, the organization that handles the Blue Ribbon Award nominations for private schools. In addition to being outnumbered by religious academies, independent private schools are often of a mind-set that prevents them from applying for the government-given award in the first place, McTighe added.

“The culture within the independent school community is a noncompetitive culture,” he said. “They don’t want to be compared to other schools. They want to be seen as a unique program. They’re not called independent for nothing.”

As with the public schools that have won blue ribbons (this year there were six in Orange County), each of the winning private schools is unique. They have different financial resources, different educational philosophies, and serve different communities.

But what they share, according to their administrators, is a holistic approach that allows these educators freedom to cross tricky boundaries that public schools must navigate. Even in nonreligious classes, teachers feel free to talk with their students about faith, God, right and wrong.

“You educate the whole person, physical, spiritual, mental, social,” says Merritt Hemenway, principal of Santa Margarita Catholic High School. “It’s all aspects of what it takes to be a great person.”

Santa Margarita uses that educational philosophy, which has spawned a wide range of special programs including specialized support for students with learning disabilities. Launched in 1996, the Auxiliary Studies Program now includes more than 100 of the school’s 1,800 students.

Another program, of which Hemenway says he is particularly proud, is the school’s membership in the International Baccalaureate program. Students who complete the program are able to enter college with advanced standing.

The intense academic focus at Santa Margarita is combined with a religious curriculum that comes from the Diocese of Orange. Students at the school have one class of religious studies a year in addition to their six classes of secular academics.

While the classroom hours devoted to religion are relatively few compared with the other two Blue Ribbon winners, the school has an active campus ministry, spiritual retreats and a 150-hour community service requirement.

The Hebrew Academy, which is operated under the auspices of the orthodox Chabad organization, devotes about 40% of its program to traditional Jewish study.

As school director Rabbi Itzhak Newman enters a classroom, children as young as 6 bolt to their feet to show their respect. And though the students vary in their levels of religious observance at home, there is close adherence to tradition during at school. It is visible when a second-grade girl stops on her way to recess, stands on tiptoe and stretches to touch the mezuzah (an ornament that contains a scroll bearing a Hebrew prayer) in the class doorway.

Tarbut v’Torah holds daily prayers in the morning, and Hebrew language and Judaic studies classes are a critical part of each school day. Religiously, the school allows students to be as observant--or nonobservant--as they choose.

In the kosher student cafeteria, for example, there is a special sink for students who want to perform the ritual hand-washing and prayer before meals.

The blending of education and religion is something that administrators at all three schools say is a key to their success.

“It’s not like you learn science at school, and then after school somebody might teach you to be a good citizen,” said Tarbut v’Torah’s elementary school Principal Bernice Tabak Gelman. “It becomes part of the whole fabric of the school. They see it in the context of their entire universe.”