At San Francisco’s elite Lowell High School, the language lesson these days is Hatzilu, hatochnit b’sakana (Help! The program is in danger).
What is believed to be the only Hebrew course taught in any public high school in the Bay Area is facing elimination next fall because of shrinking enrollment.
And this week, the program received another blow: the program’s longtime teacher, Michal Dramen, could lose her job because she lacks a California teaching credential.
Lorna Ho, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco school district, said Lowell must employ only credentialed teachers to maintain its accreditation from the state.
School officials have asked Dramen to send for her transcripts from her native Israel to see if they meet California requirements, Ho said Wednesday. Dramen, 63, has been teaching Hebrew at Lowell as an independent contractor since 1989. She received a teaching diploma from the University of Haifa in 1965.
Noting that “our mandate by the state is to be in compliance,” Ho said school officials planned to “do everything we can” to resolve the problem.
She said former Superintendent Bill Rojas had waived Dramen’s credentialing requirement in 1994, but school officials have since determined that waiver is not valid.
Ho said she thought arrangements could be worked out to keep Dramen teaching through the end of the semester in mid-January. After that, she was uncertain how the situation would be resolved.
Said Dramen: “I don’t know what will happen.”
The latest development follows a school budget committee’s decision earlier this year that the program must find $20,000 in outside funding to survive. Currently, 28 students are enrolled in two Hebrew classes spanning three separate levels.
First-year Hebrew already was eliminated this year.
The credentialing issue “is a whole new wrinkle that wasn’t even on our radar,” said parent Judy Kivowitz, whose 15-year-old daughter, Lauren, is taking second-year Hebrew as a sophomore.
Another parent, Tami Zemel, said: “You don’t wait until the middle of the semester and say, ‘Whoops, we made a mistake.'”
Parents are not only worried about the program’s future but also about the ability of their children to fulfill the three-year language requirement for admission to U.C. campuses.
That’s a potential dilemma for Lauren Kivowitz, a graduate of Brandeis Hillel Day School. “I’ve taken Hebrew pretty much since kindergarten,” she said. “I’d forgotten a lot of it. It’s all coming back to me.”
“The kids who take it really like it,” said Dramen in an earlier interview. Eliminating the program, she said, would be “a big loss. It gives them identity; it gives them a feeling of who they are.”
Dramen said the Hebrew program at Lowell dates back to the 1970s. When she first started, the class was funded by the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education. Sometime in the mid-1990s, that support ended, and the school district ultimately agreed to pay for it.
Hebrew is one of nine languages taught at Lowell, which has competitive admissions for its 2,500 students. In recent years, dwindling enrollment led to the end of Cantonese and Filipino instruction.
“If we can hold onto it, that’s what we want,” said Dorothy Ong, head of the school’s language department. But last year, the site council determined that the Hebrew program, which had 38 students in the spring of 1999, would need to get outside funding to continue. By contrast, 533 students took Spanish and 456 took Chinese (Mandarin) last spring.
“What we’re looking for is some benefactor to fund the program not just for one year,” Ong said. “If it’s to be a viable program, it needs to be at least four years.”
If funding isn’t found, school officials have mentioned the possibility of students taking Hebrew classes at nearby San Francisco State University. But parents and students alike said they consider that an unappetizing alternative.
“These kids have enough time and energy pressures as it is [without having] to deal with a class off campus,” said Herb Levine, whose 16-year-old son, Michael, takes Hebrew.
So far, the recently launched effort has drawn support from the Lowell Alumni Association; Rabbi Stephen Pearce, the spiritual leader of Congregation Emanu-El; and Hebrew studies professors at U.C. Berkeley.
Pearce has offered some suggestions to Lowell alumni about people and organizations to approach about funding the program.
“The fear of the alumni association is if Hebrew goes” other languages, like Korean, might also be eliminated, Pearce said. “I think it’s very important that they offer a very wide diversity. That’s what makes Lowell so rich.”