New home for Hausner day school New home for Hausner day school (January 07, 2004)

$12 million raised for new Jewish school's K-8 campus

by Rachel Metz

At a time when many school districts are holding their breath and clenching finances tightly, a local private school raised $12 million for a brand-new Palo Alto campus to house its busting-at-the-seams population.

Today that campus, belonging to the Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, is completely open for business -- marking the first time the school's K-8 students have been housed on the same property. Though middle school students moved into their building this fall, the elementary portion of the school opened today.

This is good news for students like second-grader Orianne Steiner, whose brother is in sixth grade.

"I like it because I get to see my big brother at recess," she said.

From 1990 to 1998, the school -- originally called the Mid-Peninsula Jewish Community Day School -- was housed at Terman Middle School. In the late 1990s, the Day School bought the site next door to Terman and built a campus for kindergarten through fifth grades, which they moved into in 1999.

When the school moved into its new Arastradero home, they weren't intending on going anywhere else, said Janet Newman, assistant head of the lower school.

"We thought we were done," she said.

But the school's burgeoning population -- helped along several years ago by the addition of a middle school program -- forced it out of the modern yellow building within just a few years. Though they started with about 30 students in 1990, they're now closer to 360, school officials said.

The move was intended to unite the middle and lower school, Newman said. The Arastradero campus was too small to house all the school's students, and it was difficult to have the school split in two as it was during the 2002-03 school year. At that time, the middle school was located in San Jose while the lower grades remained at the Arastradero site.

The school turned to parents and the Jewish Community Federation for help, and between spring 2002 and 2003 they came up with the cash for the new site. They were also helped along by $1.5 million in loans.

The school then purchased property on San Antonio Avenue in south Palo Alto. This site, a formerly-gutted office building, is now a lively-looking school. Brightly-colored doorways liven up hallways in the elementary building, and as of last week much of the multi-colored carpeting lining these halls was still covered in protective plastic while teachers set up their classrooms.

One big difference between the two schools, third-grade teacher Rose Nolen said, is the San Antonio site has shared offices for same-grade teachers.

"It's really a nice thing," Nolen said.

Every two classes also has a small breakout room for group work, and there are built-in stereo speakers and LCD projectors in every classroom, as well as wireless Internet. Unlike the old campus, which doubled up the library and computer lab, the new site has two computer labs. The school also wants to construct a third building that could house things like a gym, multi-purpose room and theater.

"They really have made a huge effort to make this a wonderful school," Nolen said.

They're not done yet, according to school officials. The school is still trying to raise between $5 million and $7 million for a third building. This structure would house an indoor gym and multipurpose room, Hausner Principal Gerry Elgarten said.

With good fortune, that could happen in about three years, Elgarten said.

Rachel Metz can be e-mailed at rmetz@paweekly.com

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