The Chosen Charter

From great reporter Rachel Baye, late of The Examiner, who now is writing for the Washington City Paper. Rachel, welcome back! We missed you!

The Chosen Charter At Sela Public Charter School, the newest idea in D.C. education—Hebrew—is three millennia old.
By Rachel Baye • August 2, 2013
A not-quite-single-file line snakes through a hallway adorned with artwork and class assignments. Flags and streamers dangle from the ceiling. A teacher attempts to calm a sobbing 9-year-old boy. Soon groups of kids will file into classrooms, take their seats, and, when prompted, greet their instructors: “Boker tov!” 

Inside the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School, the trappings are colorful and slightly worn, the bustle is familiar, and the instruction, depending on the class and the hour, sounds positively ancient.
For now, this public school in Brooklyn, N.Y.—one that teaches Hebrew, explores Israeli culture, and is even adorned with Israeli flags—is a relative rarity in the wooly, experimental world of American charter-school education. But it provides a scholastic environment that’s about to become familiar to some 110 public school students in the District, once a similar building, Sela Public Charter School, opens on August 19 in the city’s Lamond Riggs neighborhood, near Takoma.

In its first year, Sela plans to enroll students from across the District in prekindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade. In the 31,000-square-foot red brick elementary school, a former warehouse and high school, every classroom has an accent wall that matches the red, orange, or teal of the school’s slick logo. By its fifth year, Sela’s leaders intend to expand to fifth grade, and as many as 600 students will walk through the building’s red classroom doors each day.

At Sela, whose name is Hebrew for rock or foundation, school days will alternate between Hebrew and English. In math, for example, students will learn how to add and subtract in English one day, and the next day they’ll pick up where they left off in Hebrew.
For the entire story go here.