As many members of the student body can attest to, JLA, while being an amazing school, is pretty far away from most of the students’ houses. The students that attend this school live all over South Florida, with homes ranging from Tampa to Key Biscayne. These very same people don’t all have the liberty of driving to school with their parents, so it’s safe to say that the commute can get rough.

This is rather off-putting to many, which begs the question: why, if there are schools so much closer than JLA, did students choose here? This was a certain question that many students had very interesting opinions on. First, it was important to establish how far is ‘far’?

Julia Jerusalmi, an Aventura native, claimed that she lived about thirty minutes away from the school by car. Ayelet Friedman, a much more fortunate student, told the Inkwell that she lives around twelve minutes from our beloved school. On the other end of the spectrum, there is Gustavo Szyfer Rolim, who finds himself on the wrong end of Southern Florida living forty to fifty minutes away depending on traffic.

Although distances are contained within quite the expansive range, it’s still not within walking distance for anyone attending this prestigious academy. Therefore, the pertinent question of ‘why’ still remains unanswered. Samuel Stompel, a student who takes around thirty minutes each morning to arrive, had this to say on the subject: “First of all, the Israel trip. Second of all, the academics program. [And] the people, of course.” Gustavo gave his very clear opinion on the matter as well, “It was a [better] option as far as religious studies and academics.” Gustavo previously attended a non-religious school much closer to his house in Key Biscayne, so it was definitely an adjustment to him.

From all the students that were interviewed, they all had similar opinions in one way or another. The main takeaway from their responses was that there are sacrifices to be made in the commute aspect of it all, but the opportunity to attend JLA is more than enough to justify them.