Girls’ dorm gets backing
CORAL SPRINGS — One after another, men in yarmulkes or black hats, some sporting long beards, pleaded with the planning and zoning board to let a Jewish Orthodox school operate a dormitory in the city.
Students, women and supporters packed the seats and over flowed the corridor outside city hall. Two young girls in calf-length navy skirts and collared shirts asked the city “what will become of our future” if the school closes.
Rabbi Moshe Rabin of Rohr Bais Chaya Academy Girls School encouraged the board to ignore the city staff’s recommendation to deny the dorm request and to instead grant the academy a special exception to operate the dormitory for 37 high school girls. Late Monday, the board recommended 4-1 that the city commission approve the dorm.
The commission will vote on the dormitory request at the Oct. 2 meeting.
“What kind of community is Coral Springs trying to build?” Rabin asked. “They’re just girls living a normal daily life.”
The academy began operating the dormitory, which is zoned as a four-apartment complex, in 2005.
The girls were bused from the dormitory to their school in Tamarac before it was closed because of safety violations in June. The city didn’t know that the academy was using the building as a dormitory until a 911call resulted in a fire inspection.
Rabin said the academy will pay to fix the wiring and walls that need to be repaired.
Evenwith those fixes, the city fearedthe dorm, at 8793 NW 35th St., would be detrimental to the area and inconsistent with the general publicwelfare.
A school can’t operate a dormitory in the city unless it receives a special exception. Another school, North Broward Preparatory, successfully appealed to the city in 2009 and got approval to operate a 100-student dormitory.
But unlike the Prep dormitory, the city said it can’t grant Rohr Bais Chaya Academy a special exception because the school and the dorm don’t operate on the same campus and the dorm would negatively affect the residential character of the surrounding neighborhood.
Rabin chose not to operate a dorm near the school in Tamarac because he couldn’t find aproper building within walking distance of a synagogue.
Without tuition $16,000 a year — generated by the non-local students housed in the dorm, Rabin said, the school could be forced to close.
“The advantage of being in a dorm is that it gives them 24 hours of immersion where they can grow, make friends, take religious classes in the evenings, walk to the synagogue, volunteer in the community,” Rabin said.
The academy is a Jewish Orthodox immersion high school for about 70 girls. Half of the students are from South Florida. The other girls are from out of state or are international students.
Currently, the non-local students are living with families in the community until the dorm issued is resolved.
“The dorm is really fun, it’s like one big family,” said Shania Efune, a senior from Brighton, England. “I don’t understand it. We are not loud, we have a curfew.”