JEWISH CENTERS STAY OPEN.

Byline: Erik N. Nelson Staff Writer

Threatened with closure, debt-plagued Jewish Community Centers in Granada Hills and Sherman Oaks got a temporary reprieve from their organization's governing board, officials announced Wednesday.

``While we are not making any promises at this time, we feel that we cannot move forward without seeing what might work,'' said Marty Jannol, president of the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles.

The board asked users of the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills - which gained notoriety when five people were wounded there in an anti-Semitic shooting in 1999 - and the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center in Sherman Oaks to submit detailed plans by Friday to show how they can operate their centers without being a financial drain on the cash-strapped JCCGLA.

Users of the centers were told that JCCGLA leaders, who run seven centers in the region, discovered in October that the nonprofit organization was $3 million in debt and would have to sell the five centers it owns to pay off its debt and end the ongoing financial drain.

Plans are also expected from community boosters for Santa Monica's Bay Cities, the Silver Lake-Los Feliz and Westside Jewish community centers, which were also slated for closure.

``The community spoke up. Everybody was outraged with the notion that their center could actually close,'' said Andrea Goodstein, who is organizing the effort to save the North Valley center and who presented a business plan to the board late Tuesday.

While the centers' mainstay is nursery school and after-school care - which the users of the centers say they will try to maintain - they also provide services for the elderly and community groups, which would be cut at the Valley Cities center under its plan. Supporters of the North Valley center have collected more than $40,000 in pledges and received more than $90,000 in membership and tuition fees for next year, Goodstein said. North Valley's plan calls for senior and community services to continue.

One $100 pledge came from a Jewish community center in Richmond, Va. It had received one of 700 letters center boosters mailed to centers across the nation appealing for help and noting that the center was the site of the assault by avowed white supremacist Buford Furrow Jr.

Goodstein said the goal of the fund drive - which will include a Save Our Center rally at 11 a.m. Jan. 27 in front of the center on Rinaldi Street - is to raise $350,000.

At the Valley Cities center, supporters expect that filling up the Early Childhood Eduction Program will put the center in the black.

``We only need to fill 40 seats. We have a capacity of 150 nursery school students and we are only running with 80,'' said Mike Brezner, a businessman who volunteered to organize efforts to save the center.

The center's supporters have raised nearly $30,000 in pledges to cover any initial shortfall and they plan to raise $240,000, Brezner said.