TORONTO — Ohr Menachem Academy, which has served mainly children from the GTA’s Russian Jewish community, will not re-open this September. Its day care/preschool, which has 100 children between the ages of 2 and 5, will remain open.
Edward Kholodenko, left, and Rabbi Yoseph Zaltzman [Frances Kraft photo]
The school’s board made the decision Aug. 3, said Edward Kholodenko, president of Ohr Menachem’s board of trustees.
Parents were called the next day, and separate meetings were held that day with staff and parents.
A combination of factors led to the decision, Kholodenko said in a joint interview with Rabbi Yoseph Zaltzman, senior rabbi of the Jewish Russian Community Centre and founder of the 11-year-old school.
They included declining enrolment, a growing deficit, and a lack of financial support from UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Centre for Enhancement of Jewish Education (formerly the Board of Jewish Education, now informally called the Mercaz).
Although the school informed the federation last year that it couldn’t continue the way it was for long, the board members’ “serious discussion” about closing the school began only a week before they reached a unanimous decision, said Kholodenko.
“It was very difficult,” he added. “We tried everything we could to avoid it.”
Most Jewish day schools have a deficit, noted Rabbi Zaltzman, a Moscow native who left Russia in 1971 as a teenager and has been in Toronto since 1980 as a Chabad Lubavitch shaliach to the Russian community.
He said that at other schools, fundraising makes up the shortfall, and also, in some cases, the Mercaz pays approximately half of tuition subsidies.
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The rabbi, who established the school in 1997 to address needs in Toronto’s Russian Jewish community, said that members of the community – which numbers about 40,000 individuals – had wanted a general studies program that was closer to what they had experienced in Europe, and fewer demands in terms of Jewish practice than they had found in some other Jewish schools.
Although there were no demands or judgmentalism regarding Jewish practice at Ohr Menachem, Rabbi Zaltzman said that Jewish tradition was taught “without compromise.”
The school was affiliated with the Mercaz, but never received funding from it.
“We had an ongoing dialogue with Ohr Menachem over many years,” said Seymour Epstein, the federation’s senior vice-president for the Mercaz.
Affiliation is the first step toward funding, Epstein explained.
He added that Ohr Menachem “never managed to make the second step,” which involves meeting 32 individual criteria under five broad areas of compliance, including “a total enrolment of no fewer than 100 students for elementary schools (grades 1-8)” according to a Mercaz document.
“Any Jewish school that closes down is a sad story,” Epstein said, noting that the circumstances surrounding Ohr Menachem’s closing differ from those of the Dr. Abraham Shore She’arim Hebrew Day School, a school for children with learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and mild forms of autism, which closed its doors in June.
Earlier this year, a joint federation-She’arim committee made a recommendation to the She’arim board to close the school, while Epstein said he learned of Ohr Menachem’s closing only after the decision had been made by that school’s board.
In order for Ohr Menachem to become affiliated with the then-BJE, it had to become independent of the JRCC, under whose auspices it began, Rabbi Zaltzman noted. Originally, it was under the same charter and the same board.
The preschool, which Rabbi Zaltzman said receives funding from the City of Toronto, is located on Bathurst Street south of Steeles Avenue. Older children attended school in the JRCC’s Thornhill building on Bathurst.
Last year, Ohr Menachem had 55 students in grades 1 through 8, compared to almost 80 three years ago, Rabbi Zaltzman said. Fourteen students graduated at the end of the year.
Kholodenko said that people “normally register at the last minute,” so the 22 registered students for this fall did not necessarily reflect the expected size of the student population for the coming year.
However, there have been some dropouts due to the loss of art, music and other programs, which the school discontinued when they became too expensive to run, Rabbi Zaltzman said.
The rabbi has been meeting with parents individually to advise them about alternative educational options. He is also raising funds to cover outstanding teachers’ salaries and to refund tuition deposits and prepayments for the coming year. Annual tuition at the school was $9,740 for Grades 1 to 8.
About $150,000 is needed to make up for the shortfall.
In a letter to parents dated Aug. 4, Kholodenko wrote that those who paid the registration fee for the coming year would receive a refund within two weeks.
Parents have been “understanding,” he said. “Obviously they’re upset that they don’t have Ohr Menachem.”
His children, who were students at the school, are “very upset,” he said.
“The most painful piece is that it’s such an obvious great need in the field of education, and even in a city like Toronto, we failed to have enough support to make it happen,” Rabbi Zaltzman said.
“Hopefully, at some point, we will try and regroup,” said Kholodenko. “There’s a great desire to reopen, but a lot of things have to happen before we can bring it into reality.”
