PJA

By Jenn Director Knudsen

article created on:

Chris Lane, 42, loved attending Portland Public Schools and now is a theater teacher at one. He guides 200 budding thespians at Grant High School and directs hundreds of kids each year in school productions.
So he was certain his kids would attend public school and receive the same nurturing of individual talents he experienced in his schooling.
Wrong.
Chris and wife Laurie, also 42, found their neighborhood public elementary school far from the right fit for their eldest, Vivian, now 7 and in second grade. She attended transitional kindergarten and kindergarten at Portland Jewish Academy and then entered Laurelhurst Elementary School for first grade.
Halfway into that school year—and many tears later, her parents said—Vivian left behind her 28 classmates and a clearly overburdened teacher to return to PJA.

"One thing is we'd already been at PJA," Laurie said in phone interview from the family's Laurelhurst home. "So anything next to PJA would fall short. She was just so happy and, still, this year, she's so happy."
The family's decision was a wrenching one; Vivian's tears were a catalyst but certainly not the sole reason Laurie and Chris re-enrolled their eldest and, on her heels, little sister Lydia, 5, at PJA.
During the fall of Vivian's kindergarten year, Laurie received a diagnosis so many fear: breast cancer. "My cancer was aggressive, and it had progressed to my lymph system," Laurie said.
It was tough—financially and emotionally—to keep Vivian at PJA the rest of her kindergarten year.
"We were just very fortunate to have friends (other PJA parents) also at PJA, so they did most of the driving," Laurie said of others who undertook the daily, 25-minute commute each way to relieve Laurie of that responsibility.
"I was homebound most of the school year" due to her energy- and finance-sapping chemotherapy treatments, she said, adding, "Cancer is expensive."
However, tuition seemed a very small price to pay for Vivian's daily happiness, especially given what she had to return home to. (Lydia, then 3, was content in a nearby preschool.)
Vivian's teachers and counselors "made that year possible," Laurie said. "They were so nurturing and supportive and caring of her. They enriched her year and lessened the trauma for her."
"In a way," Laurie continued, "she was really shielded from a lot that was going on at home. I tried to save all my energy for my girls for when they came home, but I was very tired.
"I wasn't necessarily dying," Laurie said. "I certainly looked it (but) I certainly never felt it. I can't imagine what it would be like for a small child to see their mother so sick and," she added, "bald."
Then summer came. The Lanes spent the sunny season prior to Vivian's first-grade year mulling over (and over) whether to put her into the public school system in which they believed or return her to PJA, where she was forming a Jewish identity, Laurie said.
With trepidation, Vivian's parents enrolled her at Laurelhurst Elementary School. The experiment failed for this family.
"She was used to getting more attention, nurturing, having more extracurricular activities," such as Israeli dancing and art, Laurie said.
Finally, Vivian returned home one day from school and told her mother, "'Mom, I don't have to be treated that way, and I'm not going back,'" recalled Laurie.
PJA welcomed Vivian back for the second half of first grade, and after her first day in her old digs, Laurie said her eldest told her something quite different: "'Mom, I love that school; please don't take me out of there again. I love that school.'"
PJA now has 280 students and expects more in the coming months, according to Linda Nemer Singer, in her ninth year as the school's admissions director.
Annual tuition for transitional kindergarten through fifth grade is nearly $10,350. Middle school tuition is nearly $10,750. The Jewish Federation of Greater Portland helps ensure more than 30 percent of students receive financial aid, Singer said.
In fact, the school this year will receive nearly $270,000 from the JFGP, according to Laurie Rogoway, JFGP's associate executive vice president and campaign director.
Singer remembers Vivian's mother came to her after Vivian was re-enrolled. She said, "'Oh my G-d, what a difference; my daughter is so happy.'"
"When the child's not happy, it just affects the whole family," Singer said.
"I love the intellectual rigor that is embedded at PJA," Chris, Vivian's father, said of the Blue Ribbon school. "Kids are honored and encouraged to be open, be verbal, stand up for themselves" more than at the public schools, he said.
Public schools "just do not work for some kids; I feel sensitive to both sides of the issue," said Chris, who still wrestles with the public-private issue. He continued, "In the past I may have looked with a jaundiced eye on someone who ran to a private school."
But the Lanes are steadfast in their decision.
Laurie, now is cancer-free but hypervigilant about her health and lifestyle choices, says of Vivian, "She probably would have done OK (at the public school). Now she's thriving, and that's the difference."