San Francisco’s new Jewish high school looks pretty much like the school you went to — except it’s newer, shinier, more modern, more spacious, has a bigger library, better laboratories, jaw-dropping computing facilities and Day-Glo shag carpeting.
All the Jewish Community High School of the Bay lacks is students — but they’ll be showing up Wednesday.
Housed at the former California College of Podiatric Medicine on Scott Street in the city’s Western Addition, JCHS’ new digs are sleek and spacious — especially considering only 60-some ninth- and 10th-graders will occupy the building this year.
Even if and when the school reaches its self-imposed ceiling of 400 students, the L-shaped, two-story main building looks quite ample.
Even the lockers seem bigger than those you’d see in other high schools. After all, philanthropist Mem Bernstein says, this used to be a college of podiatry, “and they were used to store bodies — just kidding.”
Bernstein and fellow trustee Arthur Fried early this week took the Bulletin on a walking tour of the 20 million site, which was purchased and revamped by Keren Keshet, an Israeli charitable organization.
The school’s low enrollment goals are evident in the intimate classroom layouts. None seems to have more than 20 or so modern, Ikea-esque desks, many of which were brought over from the Tiburon “starter home” the school occupied last year — its first in operation.
Any student dropping his or her pencil on the floor shouldn’t have too much trouble locating it. Classrooms are decked out in lime green, teal, violet or royal blue mohair shag carpets that possess a durable, Brillo-like feel.
In the college-style lecture hall, the pastel seats are color-coded: Grape colored chairs have flip-up desks for righties, lime-colored ones are for the lefties. And while the same hue as the tough carpeting, the padded chairs are far more plush.
Even the tile floors of the laboratory rooms are brightly colored. “Be sure not to walk into the experiment,” says Fried, nodding toward a large ball-bearing pendulum hanging from the physics lab’s ceiling. The chemistry lab next door features a shiny new fume hood yet to be tainted by carelessly applied 18-molar hydrochloric acid or spilled potassium nitrate.
Brightly colored couches and chairs mark the student lounge, which opens onto the gleaming, mustard-colored courtyard. Wrought completely from Jerusalem stone, the rocks were provided via excavations for a building Bernstein and Fried are helping to erect in Israel.
The courtyard — not yet graced by the palm trees and greenery that, coupled with the Jerusalem stone, should give it a truly Hanging Gardens of Babylon-look –was formerly the site of two rickety old buildings. They were razed last year.
As a result, the view from the library is an impressive one, with the courtyard in the foreground and the city’s rolling hills in the rear. The library’s roughly 6,000 square feet of space is exaggerated by the legions of empty bookshelves and unused chairs and tables.
The hangar-sized space doubles as the school’s beit midrash (study hall), with a used Torah arriving last week. (“I hope it becomes more and more used,” said a laughing Fried.).
Emblazoned on the wall above the Ark is a phrase specifically selected by Rabbi Ed Harwitz, JCHS’ head of school. In gold Hebrew letters on a blue background is Proverbs 22:6 — “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Said Fried: “That’s the spirit the school is endowed with. More than the money, more than anything else, Judaism will always be vibrant and always be viable, ideally for the community as well.”
Though the facility is lavish, it is not ostentatious.
And while the wide-open windows, imported courtyard and amazing laboratory facilities are all unique and marvelous touches, the computer facilities are nothing short of breathtaking.
Each student will receive a laptop computer, meant to be used as a notebook/reference tool/you name it. Tucked away in a climate-controlled server room, the 60-odd white, diminutive laptops are currently stacked atop each other like small pizza boxes, though Fried would choose another description.
“They’re stacked like books in a library,” he said. “It’s a notebook, it’s a reference book, it gives you access to a world of knowledge.”
As impressive as it is, JCHS is still a work in progress. Looking over a model of the “completed” campus, Bernstein and Fried note future plans for a performing arts center, a second, smaller classroom building and a gym.
Those plans will require “someone else” to generously come along, Bernstein points out with a laugh. She became involved herself when her daughter, Suzanne Dryan Felson, a board member of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, informed her years ago about the fledgling high school.
The new site has a big fan in Harwitz.
The facility is “nuts in the best sense of the word,” said the rabbi. “We’re all really in love with this place. It’s a beautiful place, beautiful aesthetically. What’s going to go on here in the next couple of months is really exciting. It’s an opportunity to do everything we could have dreamed about a couple of years ago.”