Students, parents angered by news of CHAT school closing in Vaughan
Board of directors has monitored decreasing enrolment
yorkregion.com
By Simone Joseph
March 17, 2017
Parents and staff should have known earlier that the board of directors was planning on closing Vaughan’s TanenbaumCHAT Kimel Family Education Centre.
This was a complaint that continually surfaced at Tuesday night's town hall meeting at the Jewish high school.
“Why were we not mobilized?” asked Kayla Saul, a Grade 11 student. “Why was there no call to action, no transparency? If we set goals together, we would not be in this room today. How did we get here?”
On March 6, the school announced the north and south campus of the high school would be merging, meaning the Vaughan (north location) will close after this school year.
TanenbaumCHAT’s board of directors has been monitoring a decrease in enrolment at the school for two years, said Stephen Bloom, treasurer of the board.
This year, there are 386 students at the Vaughan campus compared to 621 students back at the start of the 2007-08 school year when construction of the Kimel Family Education Centre was completed.
TanenbaumCHAT also has a campus in Toronto, the school’s original campus. Back in September 2000, Grade 9 students living north of Steeles Avenue who were slated to attend the south campus were instead sent to a new north campus temporarily housed in Richmond Hill High School.
At the same time as the merger announcement, a separate announcement revealed the school’s future tuition decrease.
The school (including both campuses) and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto announced $15-million in gifts to be used toward tuition.
The donations, including a $10 million gift; and a $5 million gift from an anonymous donor plus extra fundraising, will mean a tuition drop from nearly $28,000 to $18,500 beginning in the 2017-18 school year and will maintain under $19,000 for each of the next five years.
Stephen Bloom pointed out the board had a very tight timeline. The board's work culminated in an agreement with the United Jewish Appeal the day before the closure/merger announcement was made.
When pressed further on the timeline, Bloom said they started discussions in January and concluded in February.
Head of School Rabbi Lee Buckman said the board has a grid with eight categories of responsibilities critical to the transition, which will also include lay people and administrators.
The TanenbaumCHAT board of directors and a group called SaveTCK plan to meet next week.
This group advocates; delaying the campus closing for at least one year, running an aggressive grassroots fundraising campaign, identifying areas where more cost-savings can be made and a transition plan if these goals are not met within an agreed time frame.
At the end of student Kayla Saul’s speech, she made a declaration which summed up the sentiment of parents and students.
“We have formed bonds with our teachers. We will not let this go without a fight.”
With Passover coming up, Saul wanted to quote from the Haggadah, a written guide to the Passover Seder: “Anything worth fighting for cannot be destroyed,” she said.
