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PLEASE CALL OR STOP IN! 33700 WOODWARD AVENUE BIRMINGHAM, MI 48009 248-644-8565 Mon.-Frl. 9-6 • Saturday 9-4 Metro Dealer Since 1956 DETRorr 3N ITEWISE "EWS 8/6 1999 12 Detroit Jewish News CLASSIFIEDS GET RESULTS! (248)35405959 third of the student body" receives building. It's a small program — special-needs services. The school's director Robyn Glickman estimates definition of special needs includes only 15-18 students for this year, 13 academic enrichment for gifted stu- returning from last year. The program dents as well as tutoring and counsel- offers a 2 - 1 or 1-1 pupil-teacher ratio. ing for students with learning disabil- Efshar, Hebrew for "it is possible," ities, the headmaster said. serves children with conditions such The plan goes on to state: "No as severe autism or attention deficit school can meet the needs of all stu- disorder, or those with severe behav- dents, and, the fewer the resources, ior problems. the greater the need to define the Also serving more severely dis- population the school best can serve... abled children and teens is Temple The planning process itself made clear Beth El. Beth El's program, in exis- the community's desire to provide the tence since 1975, includes Sunday financial support required for any morning classes for younger chil- Jewish family to come; there is less dren, with older children meeting Monday nights for dinner and class. This year, it will serve about 21 students. Director Rose Werney began the program to pro- vide a Jewish learning experi- ence for her mentally impaired son, Robbie, now 35, who still keeps in contact with other class members. Werney said it has always been Beth El's policy to take any special-needs child. "If we don't have a teacher who's an expert in that area, we'll find one," she said. No organized Jewish Anita Nafi-aly of the Agency for Jewish Education. learning experiences exist specifically to serve the severely disabled Detroit-area support for meeting all levels of acad- Orthodox population, although both emic need, and little conviction that Werney and Glickman said they • the school can or should handle all would gladly include any child in levels of behavior." their once-a-week programs. The plan is a call "for reflection P'TACH coordinator Josephs said and review," rather than a directive for she has had to turn away more par- specific program changes, Smiley said. ents than she'd like from her day- He renewed the commitment of school program, because the program Hillel's previous long-range plan to does not have the funding to expand work to raise the endowment for spe- to serve children with more severe cial-needs students. He said he is special needs. hopeful that the $25-million Jewish "Those who need a self-contained Life Fund now being raised through program we cannot handle," Josephs the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan said. Our students only come to the Detroit and the United Jewish resource room for an hour, then they Foundation would provide some of go back. There's a very great need, that endowment. but we can't take on any more. As it "Helping families of children with is, we haven't been able to pay our special needs is not only the responsi- teachers. bility of Hillel parents, but of the Hillel Day School has participated entire community," Smiley said. in Opening the Doors since the pro- gram's inception. However, the school's annual program grant of Who Should Pay? approximately $10,000 is only a frac- In Washington, Sara Simon, co-founder tion of the hundreds of thousands of of the Consortium of Special Educators dollars invested by Hillel into pro- in Central Agencies for Jewish gramming for special-needs students, Education, said she had grappled with said headmaster Mark Smiley. this for her entire 25-year tenure. Hillel's newly adopted long-range "The Jewish community should plan states that, at one time or anoth- certainly do what they can," she said, er during the school year, "about a "but, and it's very painful to say this, what resources does the Jewish com- munity have? "If the community has the resources, how do you allocate them? For a frail elderly person? For a newcomer from Russia or Bosnia? For a residential treat- ment facility for a disabled person whose parents are deceased? "It is painfully difficult to make these kind of decisions,"she said. Yeshiva's Rabbi Meyerfeld said that, ideally, no child should be denied an education in a Jewish envi- ronment, but the commitment of time, effort and money, both from the family and the school, was often enormous. "It's a case-by-case basis of everybody working hard," he said. "Because each case is different. The Jewish schools, like other religious schools, have been helped in the last four years by court deci- sions requiring public school districts to provide auxiliary services to private schools in their geographic boundaries. The services e, must be made available at the private school. At the Yeshiva, these ser- vices include physical, occu- pational and speech therapy, Rabbi Meyerfeld said. But they reflect a relatively small part of the cost. While specialized nor-Jewish schools charge about $15,000 per child, Rabbi Meyerfeld quoted a cost ~ of $5,000, plus an additional $2,000 for P'TACH services, at Yeshiva. Parents frequently pay for shadows or tutors for their special-needs child. Sometimes, day school parents decide to transfer their children to a special school for learning-disabled children, he said, either for a few --\ years, to gain necessary skills, or for c --/ the remainder of their school career. One of Yeshiva Beth Yehudah's youngest students is Rena Cohen, almost 5, who has Down syndrome. The family, which includes eight other children, pays for an aide to assist Rena in the classroom. "I'm very happy with the Yeshiva for allowing my daughter into the school," said her mother, Golda Cohen of Southfield. "They are delightful to work with. It was won- derful to see her playing with other Jewish kids in a normal setting." "It's all uncharted ground," &Ida Cohen added, "because every special needs child is different." II