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Special Education
was available for kids with disabilities in the frum community.”
It was clear that there was still a lot of work to be done.
Accelerating the Pace of Change ©WWW Gradual Changes
Another meeting was organized several months later, in March
Evidence-Based Treatment for Children and Adolescents of 1993. Although a blizzard had closed school for that whole
Anxiety, Behavior, Depression & Trauma week, 35 people showed up. Then a third meeting was orga-
Parenting Techniques with Proven Results nized, and Ms. Shulbank began asking questions, trying to
find out what was needed to help the special needs population
Momentumcounseling@outlook.com in Baltimore’s Orthodox community. “I kept trying to articu-
443-756-4648 late the disconnect between this community and the public at
large,” she says of those days.
Evening and Sunday appointments
Another difficulty was the fact that the frum community
straddles the City-County line, making offering services ex-
tremely complicated. Still, very few children were accessing
what was available. “One of my issues was that fewer than 10
children from Baltimore City were getting services through the
Infants and Toddlers Program,” Ms. Shulbank recalls. “I kept
saying, ‘With the number of children in the community, it’s not
possible that there are only 10 kids who need services.’”
More efforts were needed, and in 1997 the federal law was
revisited by Congress, which strongly encouraged the state to
seek out underserved communities. “I went to the director of
the Infants and Toddlers program – a black minister – and told
him, ‘I have an underserved community for you,’ Ms. Shulbank
says. “They kicked in some money, and we founded Kodem Kol,
a culturally-sensitive service coordination program in Balti-
more. In just a short time, it went from 10 kids to 60.”
Kodem Kol, an early intervention program under the auspic-
es of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, is still in existence today,
under the capable direction of Naomi Shabtai.
For school-age children, though, Ms. Shulbank’s efforts were
at that point largely informal. Then Governor Robert Ehrlich
was elected to office, and things changed yet again, with the
formation of the PEN (the Partnership for Educational Needs)
Project. This collaborative endeavor of the Macks Center for
Jewish Education, the Baltimore Jewish Council, Maryland
State Department of Education, and other government bodies
coordinated the efforts of several different organizations and the
City and Country school systems to service Orthodox children
with special needs. The organization hired Mrs. Chavi Baren-
baum as a part-time liaison with the community, and things
really took off.
“The next thing I knew, I was in meetings with my boss, Dr.
Nancy Grasmick, and Ed Miller, an assistant of then-Governor
Ehrlich, and several others. We realized that we needed to do a
needs assessment of the Orthodox community. We put an ar-
ticle in the Where What When, with a request-for-information
form. The referrals came flying in.”
Galvanized into action yet again, Ms. Shulbank assessed the
referrals and realized that the greatest need at that point was for
middle school boys. “I told Dr. Grasmick, ‘They’re not getting
54 u www.wherewhatwhen.com u
was available for kids with disabilities in the frum community.”
It was clear that there was still a lot of work to be done.
Accelerating the Pace of Change ©WWW Gradual Changes
Another meeting was organized several months later, in March
Evidence-Based Treatment for Children and Adolescents of 1993. Although a blizzard had closed school for that whole
Anxiety, Behavior, Depression & Trauma week, 35 people showed up. Then a third meeting was orga-
Parenting Techniques with Proven Results nized, and Ms. Shulbank began asking questions, trying to
find out what was needed to help the special needs population
Momentumcounseling@outlook.com in Baltimore’s Orthodox community. “I kept trying to articu-
443-756-4648 late the disconnect between this community and the public at
large,” she says of those days.
Evening and Sunday appointments
Another difficulty was the fact that the frum community
straddles the City-County line, making offering services ex-
tremely complicated. Still, very few children were accessing
what was available. “One of my issues was that fewer than 10
children from Baltimore City were getting services through the
Infants and Toddlers Program,” Ms. Shulbank recalls. “I kept
saying, ‘With the number of children in the community, it’s not
possible that there are only 10 kids who need services.’”
More efforts were needed, and in 1997 the federal law was
revisited by Congress, which strongly encouraged the state to
seek out underserved communities. “I went to the director of
the Infants and Toddlers program – a black minister – and told
him, ‘I have an underserved community for you,’ Ms. Shulbank
says. “They kicked in some money, and we founded Kodem Kol,
a culturally-sensitive service coordination program in Balti-
more. In just a short time, it went from 10 kids to 60.”
Kodem Kol, an early intervention program under the auspic-
es of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, is still in existence today,
under the capable direction of Naomi Shabtai.
For school-age children, though, Ms. Shulbank’s efforts were
at that point largely informal. Then Governor Robert Ehrlich
was elected to office, and things changed yet again, with the
formation of the PEN (the Partnership for Educational Needs)
Project. This collaborative endeavor of the Macks Center for
Jewish Education, the Baltimore Jewish Council, Maryland
State Department of Education, and other government bodies
coordinated the efforts of several different organizations and the
City and Country school systems to service Orthodox children
with special needs. The organization hired Mrs. Chavi Baren-
baum as a part-time liaison with the community, and things
really took off.
“The next thing I knew, I was in meetings with my boss, Dr.
Nancy Grasmick, and Ed Miller, an assistant of then-Governor
Ehrlich, and several others. We realized that we needed to do a
needs assessment of the Orthodox community. We put an ar-
ticle in the Where What When, with a request-for-information
form. The referrals came flying in.”
Galvanized into action yet again, Ms. Shulbank assessed the
referrals and realized that the greatest need at that point was for
middle school boys. “I told Dr. Grasmick, ‘They’re not getting
54 u www.wherewhatwhen.com u
