Chaim Heller, the head of school at Brandeis Hillel Day School, has announced that he will be ending his tenure at the school on June 30, 2012, at the end of the upcoming school year.

Heller has been involved with Brandeis Hillel Day School for 17 years. He has served as head of school for the last seven years, and was head of the San Francisco campus for 10 years prior to that. Under his leadership, the school — which has campuses in both San Francisco and San Rafael — has grown from 425 to 570 students.

In a letter to the school community, Heller said he was proud that the hallmark of Brandeis Hillel students had become “engagement and activism on behalf of the greater good, along with outstanding scholarship.” He noted that he was leaving in order to help build another school from the ground up, and that he looked forward to building “another community as part of a broader commitment to Jewish life and education.”