The American Hebrew Academy which suddenly closed on June 11 has announced that it is reopening for the 2020-2021 school year.
The notice on the American Hebrew Academy website reads, “Exciting News! The Academy will be reopening for the 2020-2021 school year.”
It continues, “Boarding and day students of all backgrounds will soon be invited to apply for admission to the 9th, 10thand 11thgrades, on line.”
That’s a huge change from June 11 when the notice on the website stated, “The American Hebrew Academy is closed.”
An email sent out to employees in June explained that the Hebrew Academy was forced to close because of “insufficient growth in enrollment and our inability to secure adequate funding to cover future school expenses.”
Most employees were laid off the day after the announcement and students who had left school for the summer planning to return in the fall had to scramble to find schools where they could finish out their high school careers.
The announcement was sudden, unexpected and appeared final.
The American Hebrew Academy was and evidently will be the only Jewish boarding school in the country. It opened in 2001 on 100 acres on Hobbs Road that was part of the old Jefferson-Pilot Club.
The school was founded by the late Chico Sabbah who was a partner in Fortress Re an aviation insurance company that was implicated in an insurance fraud scheme. As a result of that the American Hebrew Academy was sued for some of the money Sabbah had previously given to the school and Sabbah was unable to provide the endowment he reportedly had intended for the school.
When the school closed, one reason cited was declining enrollment. Parents were unhappy that the school was seeking too many non-Jewish students to boost enrollment number, specifically non-academically qualified students from China. Recently, there was news that a Chinese company had bought the campus. Now the school is supposedly reopening. Will be interesting to hear the full story.
FYI, AHA was not the only Jewish boarding school in the country. It was the only non-Orthodox Jewish boarding school in the country, and that was a big thing. But when it reopens, it will not even be a Jewish boarding school at all. And it won’t be called the American Hebrew Academy either. More on this story was released today in an email from the school.