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School Craze: Upper Grades in Building Boom
By GABRIELLA BURMAN
FORWARD STAFF
When 50 9th and 10th graders enter the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit this week, they won't just be starting high school, but a high school revolution.
From 1967 to 1988, Hillel Day School in Detroit, an affiliate of the Conservative movement's Solomon Schechter schools, offered nine grades to students before they went off to high school. The lure of public high school was so irresistible that by 1988, the average ninth grade class had dwindled to about a dozen students. There was talk of one day opening a Jewish community high school, but nobody held their breath. At the time, non-Orthodox high schools were few and far between.
Twelve years later, the story has a different ending. Detroit's new Jewish Academy is part of an explosion of new non-Orthodox high schools opening this fall or under construction. No fewer than 15 such schools are due to open their doors in the next three years, increasing the total number by one-third to 45, from 30 today. Twelve of the new schools are community, or non-denominational, schools, and three are affiliated with the Conservative movement.
The new schools include the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, N.C., the Jewish Community High School in Phoenix, Ariz. and the New Houston Jewish Community High School in Houston, Texas.
The boom in Jewish high school education outside of...