After screening a bevy of candidates for its vacant head of school position, some hailing from as far off as Canada or Israel, the Brandeis Hillel Day School board of directors last month selected one of its own, Chaim Heller, for the position.
Heller had already been doing the job on an interim basis.
He had served as the head of Brandeis’ San Francisco campus from 1995 until being tapped for the interim head of school position over the summer. And removing that “interim” from his job title is a longtime career goal.
“I really thought I would love this job, and [throughout the search process] I realized I was not the only one who would love to have this job,” said Heller, 53. “This is something I’ve always wanted to do.”
Moving on up from head of campus to head of school, Heller now needs to craft long-term plans instead of dealing with day-to-day issues. His two biggest hopes for Brandeis are to make the school affordable and relevant to the Jewish community at large and open up more connections between the school’s 550 kindergarten through eighth-grade students and Jewish children worldwide.
“We need to deepen our relationship with Jewish kids in Israel and throughout the world,” he said. “Our students should know about Jewish life in St. Petersburg.”
Heller also will be launching another international search: Alan Van Gardner, head of the Marin campus, will be leaving his position at the end of the school year and moving to another school.
In other Brandeis news, over the summer the school hired Rabbi Pam Frydman Baugh, former spiritual leader of San Francisco’s Or Shalom Jewish Community, as head of Jewish studies and Hebrew on the San Francisco campus. She will continue in that position in the coming academic year.