What you are about to read shocked me, too. I first learned of it when my husband shared Rav Moshe Heinemann’s emotional plea on Selichos night at the Agudah about the hundreds of frum Baltimore children are not enrolled in Jewish schools. Without offering any further details, the Rav passionately stated that our community has a responsibility to deal with this issue. I was determined to find out more, and the investigative reporter in me took over. This is what I discovered:
It turns out that
Seth Gerstman was also at the Agudah on Selichos night and heard Rav
Heinemann’s plea. He took the initiative to gather further information for the
Rav, and was most instrumental in leading me to those in the loop.
Explains Mr.
Gerstman, “Our schools do a wonderful job educating and providing an
appropriate environment for the vast majority of children in the community. However,
as they are set up now, our main educational mosdos (institutions) are not equipped to handle larger numbers of
students with significant learning requirements, and, unfortunately, the
challenge of educating children with learning differences and/or disabilities al pi darko (appropriately) is forcing
too many parents to put their children into a non-Jewish environment. I expect
that this really tears at the hearts of parents who are in this situation. As a
community, we should be able to put our collective heads together to work
towards a solution that allows these children to be educated properly, both in
secular studies and life skills, as well as in Yiddishkeit.”
Information in a
SNAP
As coordinator of
Maryland Special Needs Advocacy Project-Center for Jewish Education (MDSNAP), Martha
Goodman has her finger on the educational pulse of our community and estimates
that about 300 frum children in
Baltimore are not attending a Jewish school. Of those, approximately 150 are
homeschooled. Some long-time homeschoolers are teaching their children at home
by choice. Others are homeschooling because of Covid or because of disabilities,
financial challenges, or immunocompromised family members.
By state law,
students who are not in school are required to be registered as homeschooled
students. Unless one is using one of a short list of approved curricula,
homeschoolers are required to be registered with an umbrella group. The
majority of homeschool students in Baltimore are registered with the Chabad
homeschool group. Yet others are registered in the Tashbar program, which has
different learning tracks.
In addition to
homeschooled students, Mrs. Goodman believes that some students are enrolled in
private virtual schools, particularly high school students. And, surprisingly, some
children are not receiving formal instruction at all. She describes a typical
dilemma leading to children doing nothing at all. “I received a call today from
a day school administrator, explaining that two children in one home – each
with disabilities – are at home now until or unless a shadow can be secured. A
shadow costs as much as a day school tuition, and there is no scholarship, no
BOOST – no way to reduce the cost, which is equivalent to paying double tuition
for your child in addition to SHEMESH,” says Mrs. Goodman.
Mrs. Goodman
continues, “Then, you have students in public and private schools, and students
in private special-education schools. These two groups probably represent 100
to 150 students. There are a handful of students who do not have disabilities
but are in public school, but this is rare. Similarly, there are – or have been
– a handful of students in elite private schools, such as Gilman and Park
School. The majority of students, though, have educational disabilities. That
is an umbrella term, which spans across a wide range of nature and severity of the
disability.”
Mrs. Goodman
believes that dozens of students are enrolled in schools like Jemicy, Odyssey,
Legacy, Lab, and public schools, due to dyslexia. “Some are enrolled by their
parents. Others have received placements to private schools through the public
school system. In those cases, I believe the families would be loath to give up
their hard-won gains.
“Those who are
paying high tuitions in such schools would value a high quality, lower cost,
Jewish option. TI has done some work in this direction, with its Laylah
program, the brainchild of Daniel Ely. Personally, I believe that nearly all of
these students could be educated in day schools with proper planning, resources
and support.”
Autism is another
large category, and frum children
attend Gateway, Harbour, Lab, KKI, and public schools to get their educational
needs met. Other disabilities that have prompted parents to send their children
to secular schools include attention and behavioral challenges, emotional
disorders, math disabilities, orthopedic impairments, health impairments, and
intellectual disabilities.
Mrs. Goodman
mentions that a group of girls (mostly, but not exclusively with Down syndrome)
has a partially state-sponsored class at Bais Yaakov, but there is no such
class for boys.
Some children with
significant disabilities attend public schools or others, such as KKI or RICA.
This is a small group of children who require the highest level of need,
usually with medical involvement, or have highly aggressive behaviors. Children
who are deaf and use sign language or are blind and have co-morbid conditions
also attend these schools. “While some of these children are now educated at
Jewels, many are in public placements, and this is likely to always be the
case,” says Mrs. Goodman. “Some, but not all, of these children are involved
with Menucha and/or the CJE Sunday school program, Gesher l’Torah at CJE.”
Another group to
be aware of, she says, is the students who are in residential treatment
centers, largely in the West. Perhaps there are 20 to 30 students in these
programs. In addition, a number of students travel from Baltimore to Rockville
to attend Sulam, at great expense and effort.
The WhatsApp
group, Al Pi Darko, designed for frum Baltimore families who have
children outside of day schools, is an informal indication of their rising
numbers; the group currently has 45 members. Other programs and classes to be
aware of, mentioned by Mrs. Goodman, include: Kol Echad - an Associated program
for children with disabilities - some frum families go to events run by this
group; a group for middle and high school age boys who do not have autism, but
are not attending days schools; Tashbar’s free Sunday programming; the
Friendship Circle; Yachad; Bas Melech is hosting the Hebrew School for the
Performing Arts, to offer some Jewish content to students outside day schools;
Mrs. Eichorn spearheaded the creation of a new class at Bnos, for girls who
otherwise had no school to attend, due to disability; Owings Mills and Hunt
Valley Chabads are running a tuition-free Hebrew school; Rabbi Menda at Cheder
Chabad indicated he plans to open a special education class; NCSY - has a group
made up of teens who are more frum, but maybe in public school; ChillZone –
separate gender, 4th to 9th grade - designed for public schools students.
A Serendipitous
Solution
Tashbar,
under the direction of Rabbi Meir Khaver, a beloved rebbe at many Baltimore
yeshivos, is one of the newest additions to Baltimore’s chinuch scene. Tashbar was formed as a learning group for home-educating
families who want their sons to learn from top-notch rebbeim in a small group
setting. Unlike the conventional grade-based approach, this unique “tracked”
system allows students to join a group ideal for them and graduate to the next
level as rapidly as they are ready. As its website proclaims, “Our unique
hybrid approach combines the conventional classroom with semi-private teaching
sessions, allowing for concierge-style education, gifting every student with
the opportunity to excel. Socially constructed like a healthy family structure
rather than a peer group, students spend time learning and playing daily with
students in other tracks, allowing them to interact and be respected by both
older and younger friends.”
Tashbar’s
newest initiative is a weekly Sunday leaning program which is open to the
community.
Perhaps, there is
an Alternative!
Chanina Reischer,
who admits he is not an educator and is relatively new to the scope of the
problem, is trying to do some of the necessary legwork to create a conceptual
plan which would ensure that our children have an alternative. This crisis
became near and dear to his heart after learning about it this past summer from
a local member of the community who was collecting money for approximately 50 frum Baltimore children who would
otherwise be enrolled in a non-frum
school. Mr. Reischer’s initial skepticism over what he thought was an
exaggerated number, led him to do his own research. He and a few friends
researched the topic informally and were astounded to discover that there are actually
more than 100 – and maybe as many as 300 – children who are not attending frum schools.
“It seems to me
that one of the reasons many people don’t know about this problem is because it
is very fragmented,” continues Mr. Reischer. It’s not like everybody has picked
up and gone to one school for ‘special education.’ There are a handful of frum girls in St. Elizabeth’s School,
some kids in Jemicy or Odyssey, some in Lab School, and each child has his or
her own unique challenges that can’t be bundled together. When you put the
various reasons they are not in frum
schools – such as autism, dyslexia, severe ADHD, anxiety, etc. – in the same
bucket, the solution becomes very difficult. I am told by educators that there
are four separate buckets, and they need to be taught using four different
methodologies. Plus, they span the gamut of elementary middle- and high-school
children.”
Interestingly, Mr.
Reischer found only two families who sent their kids to public schools solely because
of finances; they were too uncomfortable to go before a tuition reduction
committee and said they would rather send their kids to public schools.
“To solve the
problem, as I understand it today,” says Mr. Reischer, “we would need the St.
Elizabeth’s School, The Lab School, Odyssey, Jemicy, and the other special-needs
schools to run separate programs within the frum
schools – or at least in a frum
environment. If we can get our kids the same skills and methods for their secular
education that they would be getting in these special-needs schools – but on
top of that put a morah or rebbe in
there to teach them kodesh subjects in
the unique way that these children need to be taught – that would go a long way
to solving a very substantial part of the problem.
“When I asked some
of the parents I spoke to if they would they be interested in enrolling their
child in such a frum program if they
had the option, the response was overwhelmingly, ‘of course, as long as the
child could get the help they needed even if educationally it was slightly
inferior.’”
Sound simple? Not
quite. First, you would have to get authorized by the state to start such a
program off-site for reimbursement; it costs $40,000 to $50,000 per child per year.
Second, the day schools would have to agree to who was coming in to teach and
agree to co-educate them. Third, the programs would need to be housed in a frum environment, and most of the day
schools are bursting at the seams and don’t have physical space and educational
facilities that special education would require.
Unfortunately, as
Mr. Reischer found out, we are just becoming aware of the scope of this
problem. And, to make the mission even more difficult, it is hard to gather
accurate data. “We need facts in order to substantiate the scope of the problem,”
he said, “and one of the reasons it is so hard to get the information is
because there are parents who understandably don’t want to share their child’s
diagnosis and information. That makes it challenging to get all the information
in one place.”
To anonymously
share your personal data for purposes of helping our children mainstream in a
Torah school environment, please contact Ariel Sadwin,
asadwin@agudathisrael-md.org.
