Three days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Stephanie Kramer desperately left her home in southern Israel for New York City in search of safety, but also had to find a school for her 3-year-old daughter. Ta.
Luckily, a friend told her Rabbi Arthur Schneier Park East An Upper East Side day school is recruiting children from Israeli families, and 3-year-old Yazen found a place in the school’s $30,000-a-year tuition waiver.
She wasn’t alone.
It reported that after the Hamas massacre, at least 168 Israeli students were placed in 22 private Jewish full-time schools in New York City, Westchester, and Long Island. United Jewish Appeal – New York Jewish Charitable Federation (UJA).
The paper also said Jewish full-time schools across the country were seeing historic enrollment increases as more than 1,000 temporary Israeli students sought safety. Registration trend report It was released earlier this month by Prizmah, a Jewish day school center.
Additionally, demand from U.S. parents to transfer their children from public schools has increased since the October 7th attacks, with 32% of parents who transferred their children to their previous school being affected by the terrorist attack. The answer was that the response was the cause.
Kramer, 30, also a U.S. citizen, left her husband Erez, 30, who was deployed to Gaza to fight in Israel, and took her daughters Yaruzen and 1-year-old Alaba to Hell’s Kitchen. I stayed with my father. She worried that it would be difficult to find her place in Yalzen.
“I thought it would be more difficult to find a school in the middle of the year,” said Cramer, who met her husband while serving in the Israel Defense Forces.
“The minute I contacted them, they called me back. The next day, we came to tour the school, and the next day my 3-year-old son started classes in the early childhood development program.”
Rabbi Arthur Schneier Park East Day School (RASPEDS) admitted 22 students from Israeli families on October 7 after sending a memo warning parents. Israel’s open door policy for displaced families.
“Many schools [in Israel] It was closed soon after the war began. Parents didn’t want their children to be locked down again like they were during COVID-19,” said Debbie Rochlin, principal of Rabbi Arthur Schneier Park East Day School. told the Post.
“Some parents wanted to come to New York and put their children in a safe place.
“Our doors were open and we were ready to provide a warm and nurturing environment for these students and allow them to continue their studies without interruption.”
Rochlin said her faculty has streamlined the admissions process by waiving not only tuition but all fees and offering mental health counseling to students in need. In her third year, she noted, there was a particular increase in Israeli students transferring in.
“In general, it’s difficult for children to enroll mid-year, let alone in foreign schools. But our teachers and students accepted them,” Rochlin said.
Other schools enrolling Israeli children include Manhattan Day School on the Upper West Side, Ramaz School on the Upper East Side, Luria Academy in Brooklyn, and Westchester Day School. and so on.
Complicating matters, the Israeli arrivals, like Cramer’s daughter, speak Hebrew as their first language.
“She was learning a lot and her English was improving. She was able to express herself. [better] “It was a wonderful place for her,” Kramer said.
Kramer returned to Israel in November to reunite with her husband, who was released from the IDF, but the family hopes to return to New York and re-enroll their daughters in a private Jewish full-time school.
Elana, who asked The Post not to use her last name for privacy reasons, said Westchester Day School is a Modern Orthodox Jewish private school for preschool through eighth grade students in Mamaroneck, Westchester. It became a refuge for four children aged 17, 14 and 11. , and 8.
With schools closed in Israel, the family left on October 12th to live with family in Scarsdale, New York, and began classes with elementary school children after Thanksgiving.
“I said, ‘We have to enroll them in something.’ They stayed home doing nothing. We didn’t know what was going on with the war. Our The children were out of school for a month,” Elana told the Post.
WDS waived up to $29,700 a year in tuition and ignored requests for transcripts, she said.
She and her family are back in Israel, but hope to move back to New York permanently.
“Personally, when you are evacuating, it is a dark time,” Elana told the Post. “This has given us light in a dark time.”
