The Leo Baeck Day School is a Greater Toronto Area Reform Jewish day school composed of over eight hundred students from Nursery to Grade Eight. Named in honour of Rabbi Leo Baeck, it has two campuses, in Thornhill and Toronto.
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Former School Director Zita Gardner retired in July 2004. She was replaced by David Prashker, formerly a senior teacher at a British private school and Housemaster of Polack's, the last Jewish boarding facility in Europe. The Leo Baeck Day School, under David Prashker's direction, released a five-year plan, which, among other things, reconstituted the school's Board of Trustees as a Strategic Board, focusing on the future of the school and leaving day-to-day management in the hands of the professionals. The installation of laptops in every classroom has been accomplished, as the first phase of a major introduction of technology into the teaching programme. in 2007-2008 school year, the school introduced a "roaming lab" of laptops for student use, and installed Smartboards at each campus.
According to the Toronto Star, Prashker resigned in 2008 after the parents responded negatively to the discovery of sexually explicit poetry that he had published decades earlier, but was available on the internet. [1]
At the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year, Dennis Grubbs took the reins as Interim Director of The Leo Baeck Day School, as he helped during the school's transition year. At the end of his much lauded term, Dennis Grubbs handed the position over to Eric Petersiel, who had long-served as the school's South Campus principal.
In January 2011, the school was accepted as an official International Baccalaureate school for the Middle School years. The introduction of "Best Practices" in the Primary grades supports the IB philosophy, although the Primary School is not an official International Baccalaureate school.
Leo Baeck is run by the Head of School (Eric Petersiel), a principal at each campus (Ron Mintz [interm] at the South Campus and Yvette Burke at the North Campus),and the Board, which is composed of parents and members of the community. The school is affiliated with the Mercaz, the Union for Reform Judaism, and PARDeS, the Progressive Association of Reform Day Schools.
The North Campus includes classes from Nursery through Grade 8 and the South Campus includes classes from SK through Grade 8. In the year 2005-2006, The Leo Baeck Day School South Campus had its first graduating class. The North Campus recently renovated its main building to now include a wider, more attractive entryway as well as replacing its main gym's tiled floors with highly anticipated wooden ones. This renovation also replaced some classrooms with office space and a new multi-purpose room to be used by Temple Kol Ami, a reform synagogue that has been and will continue to be stationed at Leo Baeck's North Campus.
Leo Baeck publishes "The Baeck and Call" every season, a magazine with school updates and events.
In the Spring of 2011, The Leo Baeck Day School purchased the Arlington Middle School. Instead of re-building the existing campus in a partnership with Holy Blossom Temple, Leo Baeck plans to renovate Arlington Middle School, and then move in for the 2012-2013 school year.
Since Prashker's initiation of the International Baccalaureate Program at the school, it has tried to take a more progressive approach to the student's learning. Included in the new direction are the installation of smartboards and purchasing various Apple products such as iMacs, Macbooks, and iPads as well as the continuation as well as expansion of the International Baccalaureate's Primary and Middle Years programs. Reception of this new approach has been rocky with students and teachers, mainly the people who have been at the school for some time as the school is changing at a rapid pace.