A new baby is born! A new sister or brother, a new son or daughter, a new grandchild – a new member of the Jewish community! As we rejoice, we all assume that the parents will choose to educate their child in one of Baltimore's many fine day schools, where he will grow into a mensch surrounded by friends who share the same beliefs, celebrate the same holidays, and wear the same kinds of clothes. But sometimes things don’t work out as planned, and a child does not succeed. Some parents come to the realization on their own that the day school cannot meet their child’s needs, and look for different options. In other cases, it is the school that approaches the parents, and the news may come as a big shock. As one parent said, “I am torn and heartbroken. If my daughter’s school cannot provide what she needs, where else can I turn.”
“Bais Yaakov tries very hard to service all the children in our community,” says Rabbi Mendel Freedman, longtime principal of Bais Yaakov elementary school. “Girls with many kinds of special situations have attended Bais Yaakov. But sometimes a child may have a need that is beyond the ability of a day school to service even with the best intents and with excellent special educators in learning centers. Although that may be disappointing, frightening, and a bitter pill for a parent to swallow, many parents have seen a lot of hatzlacha (success) when they send their child to a public or private school that is better equipped to teach her. These schools obviously have financial resources that are not available to our schools. Public schools also have a critical mass, meaning that they have enough children with specific needs that they can provide more specialized services for varied learning challenges, at a more reasonable cost.” Over the last several years, staff members of Shemesh, the special education resources program of The Associated, have seen a marked increase in the willingness and ability of the Jewish day schools to accept and serve children with a wider range of learning issues, knowing that Shemesh services are available. “Hopefully, the day will come when there will be an appropriate place for every Jewish child in a Jewish setting,” says Dr. Aviva Weisbord, executive director. “Until that time, Shemesh also is available to help and guidance in exploring alternatives through a process that can be challenging for parent, school, and child.”
For Mrs. M.,* the mother of “Dovid,” 13, currently a student at Jemicy School, the choice was clear: “Leaving my son in a Jewish day school, where he was just floating along and not learning anything, would be doing him a disservice. When we asked a rav if we should consider sending Dovid to Jemicy for the following school year, he was very supportive. In fact, he actually encouraged us to see if we could send him for this year already!”
Yet Mrs. C., who has had children in non-Jewish schools, described the fear that gripped her at the thought of sending them there. “I couldn’t contain myself,” she said, “Was I doing the right thing? Even though I know a rabbi is not a prophet, I begged the rabbi to promise me that it would work out for the best and my child would be okay. It was only with his reassurance that I had the courage to take the big step. The child who was in public school for two years is now an A student in a Jewish high school.”
Deciding whether a child would benefit from a placement other than a Jewish day school is a balancing act – weighing the child’s need to learn the skills necessary for a successful life with the need to nurture his or her essence as a religious Jewish child. Each situation and each child is different, and most families arrive at a decision after discussion with the child’s teachers, administration, and family rav.
Mrs. M. says, “In my opinion, the frustration of being at the bottom of the class and not learning the skills necessary for a successful life can cause children to go off the derech more than the exposure to a non-Jewish environment.”
And Flo Goldberg, the mother of a current 12th grader who attended Odyssey for fourth and fifth grade, said, “Rabbi Freedman’s encouragement and assurance that he would accept our daughter back when we decided together that she was ready made our decision easier. My daughter gained a tremendous amount from her two years in Odyssey, but I was ready for her to go back to Bais Yaakov after those two years. She was exposed to a lot of things we would have liked to avoid during the time she was away from Bais Yaakov.”
An Abundance of Schools
It is hard to find statistics on whether children have more special needs now than in the past, or whether we are simply identifying such children more often, or whether we are discovering more innovative techniques to help them learn. But it does seem as though there are more specialized schools, not only in Baltimore but around the country.
* Mrs. M. is happy to speak to any parent about her experience. Contact her through the Where What When.
Some private specialized schools that children in our community have attended are Jemicy, Odyssey, Auburn, Gateway, The Lab School, and Harbor Place. Many children also attend public school programs, like the one at Summit Park elementary school. And one mother mentioned that her child attends a therapeutic pre-school at Towson University, where each child works one-on-one with a speech therapy student at the college. Each of these schools specializes in certain areas, like language-based problems or social problems.
Once the difficult decision is made to send a child to a more specialized school, another obstacle crops up: the cost. Some of the private schools mentioned have a tuition fee of about $30,000 a year. Is the only choice for our children a day school or a private school that is exorbitantly expensive? “No,” says Martha Goodman, coordinator of the Maryland Special Needs Advocacy Project of the Center for Jewish Education. “Many families in our community have found good programs for their children through the public school system. According to the law, the school system has to work with you to find an ‘appropriate placement’ for your child. It is worth getting tested through the school system and see what they have to offer. If they have a program that fits the child, that is great, and if not, they will be more inclined to pay for a non-public placement. It is extremely individualized,” Mrs. Goodman continues, “There are so many factors that have to be taken into consideration that one cannot draw conclusions from the experiences of others. Each family has to advocate for its own child.” The program that Martha works for offers free educational advocacy for all Jewish children, ages infant to 21. Mrs. Goodman can be reached at 410-735-5012 or by email at mdsnap@cjebaltimore.org.
According to Mrs. M., no comparison can be made between the specialized learning in Jemicy and in a regular day school: “First of all, the classes are much smaller. My son is in a class of three to five children. He is in an awesome program called USP, Upper School Preparatory. Its whole purpose is to teach the children how to learn and study on their own. The homework is done by the children themselves, and they are encouraged to email their teacher if they have any questions. All the work in the classroom is done on the computer and the children are taught how to organize their work into folders. They have a special class at the end of the day which is just devoted to organization and preparation, not for homework. For example, a child could use that class to make flashcards to help him with his studying. All the teachers in all the subjects use the same methods and techniques so that the children know what to expect in each class.”
Dovid M. was happy to share his experiences with me. The words spilled out of his mouth as he eagerly shared his excitement: “One of the things that the teachers have taught me is about highlighting,” Dovid reported. “The main idea is always highlighted in pink, and the supporting ideas are highlighted in yellow. Words and their definition are highlighted in green. Each paragraph can only have one main idea. Even if a fact is important, if it is not connected to the main ideas, we don’t highlight it.” He continued, “I have a private class every day with one other kid to work on writing, because that is my weakest area.” Although Dovid admitted that he hasn’t gotten to know the other kids in school very well yet, he said they seemed nice. He is able to maintain his friendships with his old friends from TA because he meets them in shul on Shabbos.
“One of the things that the children learn in a school like Odyssey,” says Mrs. Goldberg, “are coping mechanisms. All the classes are geared to children with a particular disability. The children learn to discuss their disability openly and are not embarrassed, because everyone in the class has similar issues. They become comfortable with their own strengths and weaknesses, and everyone in the class goes out for extra help, so no stigma is involved.”
Mrs. M. agrees: “The children learn how to be their own advocates. If a teacher is explaining a lesson and they do not understand, they learn to be comfortable asking her to repeat herself more slowly. They also learn about different learning styles and which ones are best for them.”
Laura Leventhal’s son, Elya, is a student at the Auburn School, which opened its Baltimore branch just two years ago. “I can’t get over the hashgacha that caused me to open up the Owings Mills Times two years ago, just after Yeshivat Rambam closed and we could not find another Jewish school for our child to attend,” she says. “I saw the advertisement for the Auburn School and knew right away that this is what I was looking for to help my son.”
Mrs. K., another mother of a student at the Auburn School, relates, “It is so wonderful to have my son in a school that is happy to have him. Even though the teachers tell me the difficulties that my son is having, it’s not a problem, because their attitude is, ‘That’s why he is in our school; we will work with him.’” Indeed, the Auburn School describes itself as a place where a “student’s unique differences become reasons for academic success and social inclusion. The overall environment is one of cultivating person self-confidence, happiness, and wellbeing.”
“The Auburn School is very small,” says Mrs. Leventhal. “Only eight children are in my son’s class, which encompasses sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. The children are taught in all different modalities and are brought into the learning process. They learn to work on their own strengths and weaknesses.” Auburn has a system that is called the Auburn Student Compass, a unique learning map created for each student. The students discuss with the teacher the goals they want to work on that year, and the goals are reevaluated and worked on regularly. A special class at Auburn is called “social thinking,” and it involves role playing and discussions to learn how to handle situations that have come up.
“I feel that day schools in our community are not equipped to deal with kids who are a little different than the other children,” says Mrs. Leventhal. “My experience was that, instead of working with my son and respecting him, the teachers’ main response was to send him to the principal. In fourth grade, he was in a school with only six boys in his class. At lunchtime, the teacher would put five of the boys on one side of the table and my son all the way on the other side to avoid any potential conflict. Instead of working with the group and helping them learn to get along, the teacher found it easier to isolate my son. Children are not cookies! We cannot cut them all with the same cookie cutter, bake them, and throw away the ones that burn or fall apart! In his new school, my son has changed from the bullied and ostracized child to one who is a wellrespected leader,” she concludes.
The Transition
Leaving a Jewish day school to go to a secular one is a big transition – and so is coming back. The main issues are the child’s Jewish education and friends.
Parents worry, of course, about how the children will keep up with their Jewish studies. Many parents make it a priority to make sure their children learn Jewish subjects, even though they have to do it after school. Dovid M., for example, learns with a rebbe every night at the Community Kollel. “That’s the one thing that I don’t like about going to Jemicy,” said Dovid. “I really don’t like going out to learn at the end of the day.”
Other parents let the Jewish part of their children’s education fall to the wayside. Perhaps it is too much for their child to keep up. Mrs. S., a mother of a student who graduated from the Lab School, said, “My son is really doing wonderfully in his first year of college, and I am thrilled at the education he got at the Lab School, but it is a shame that he is not able to daven and learn like his brothers who attended day schools. He also would like to go to Israel to learn for a year, but we haven’t been able to find a place yet that would be good for him. He really doesn’t have a rebbe to advocate for him because he never developed a relationship like that.”
According to Rabbi Freedman, “To some degree, how well the girls catch up in their Torah studies is dependent on the intensity of tutoring that the parents provided while they were in public school or in another private setting. It takes a lot of hard work, but we have baruch Hashem seen some remarkable success stories.”
Although there are no Jewish studies at the public or private schools we have mentioned, most of them go out of their way to respect the Jewish children’s values. At Gateway School, a local private school for children ages 3 to 12 with language and communication disorders, the administration is very sensitive to the needs of the frum children, says Laya Rosenbaum, who worked there for 10 years before joining Bais Yaakov’s Middle School Learning Center this year. “They used to have holiday parties at the end of December but now, as the frum population has increased, they have a ‘winter party.’ Currently, Gateway has 45 students, with about 10 of them coming from frum families. When the administration saw that a few parents were uncomfortable with Halloween parties, they stopped having them. At their Thanksgiving feast, they are careful to offer kosher food for the children that is very similar to the food being served to the rest of the school.”
Social issues are another obstacle that parents and children have to deal with. “Miriam” says, “It was hard for me, because I had very few friends when I was in a non-Jewish school. The parents of my old friends did not want them to play with me because they were afraid I would be a bad influence. I think it was more the parents who had a problem than the kids. But when I went back to Bais Yaakov after three years at Jemicy, I fit right back into the school. It was hard to catch up academically in the Hebrew subjects, and I needed additional tutoring, but the girls were nice to me and included me.”
Mrs. Rosenbaum says, “It can be lonely for the children who go to other schools, because they don’t know the other kids in their neighborhoods.” She suggests that parents make an extra effort to encourage their children to include children who go to other schools in their activities on Shabbos or when school is closed.
Caren Cutler agrees: “The parents of some of my child’s friends had a problem that my child was going to a non-Jewish school,” says Ms. Cutler, who had children attending Jemicy. “I think that, at times, for at least one of them, those years were more lonely than they had to be. But when I now see the confidence that my children have in life and in building a Jewish home, I know that it was worth it.”
When we look at that innocent little newborn, we don’t know what the future will hold. But we do know that we, as his parents, will do our best to put our child in the best possible environment. Sometimes parents have to look outside of the Jewish community to find the best education for their children. It is good to know that options are available and that our community is supportive of the choices that parents have to make.â—†
