Dismayed by what they called a dearth of services for children with special needs in the Jewish community, a dozen battle-weary parents convened last week to address the situation.
The group, which met at San Francisco’s Bureau of Jewish Education, the organizer of the Special Needs Forum, represented a spectrum of concerns, from the needs of children with attention-deficit disorder to those with developmental and physical disabilities.
The parents were uniform in their belief that the organized Jewish community has given short shrift to their children’s educational needs. Robbie Holland, who traveled from Sacramento to attend the forum, said his daughter Rachel, who has physical and developmental disabilities, was once asked a question that typified his family’s experience within the Jewish educational system.
“Another child asked my daughter whether she was Jewish or retarded,” Holland said. “Now it was clear that the child who asked Rachel the question didn’t mean it to be malicious, and that she was clearly struggling with the concept. But the thinking was that she couldn’t possibly be both…and I think in essence that’s one of the reasons that this group is meeting.”
Holland, who was called a hero by other members of the forum, is somewhat of a cause célèbre in the special-education community. He waged a successful five-year battle with the Sacramento City Unified School District that ultimately wound its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision mandated that the school district must comply with federal law, meeting Rachel’s special educational needs in a learning environment that included non-disabled children.
While the parents struggle to place children with special needs in the public school system, the problems are exacerbated when dealing with private schools –including Jewish ones — according to many of the participants at the Aug. 29 Special Needs Forum.
“There is a feeling of rage and anger about this issue,” said Sylvie Chouraki of San Francisco, whose son Ruben had a rocky path through private Jewish schools and “has been labeled” as having ADD.
“The feeling is, ‘Why don’t my own people help me?'” said Chouraki. “And I think the answer is that the community is scared of these kids.”
Chouraki decried what she called the “fallacy of equal opportunity” in the local Jewish day schools, saying that private schools have a right to be selective in who they admit. On the other hand, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, which helps fund Jewish day schools, should meet the needs of the entire Bay Area Jewish population, she added.
“I think that there’s a lot of shanda around this issue,” concurred Connie Tabas of San Francisco, using the Yiddish word for “shame.”
Tabas, whose son Abe has autism and recently celebrated his bar mitzvah, said: “We don’t need more Jewish literature — we have great history already in the Torah and Talmud. What we need to do is overcome fear and xenophobia. And that change has to come from the top down.”
The theme of top-down change was articulated several times during the discussion, with many people conceding that unless the Bay Area’s “Jewish hierarchy” gets involved, change in attitudes and funding will move at a glacial pace.
“I saw a Jewish high school get proposed, funded and built in less than a year and a half,” said Tabas. “So I know that if the desire is there, then the money will follow.”
Tiburon resident Jack Hersch agreed, saying it’s necessary to look at the grid of power and money, and then “find out who among that group has children or grandchildren who are disabled — because that’s when you are going to see action.”
Financing is a priority for the group, which will meet again in October. The forum’s facilitator, Ilene Lee, said the group’s goals are three-pronged: to find a significant source of funding, locate someone with the expertise to allocate those funds and oversee the full range of special education needs, and to “chip away at the stigma” of children with special education needs.
Lee is hoping for an operating budget of $400,000 annually to fund special education programs in Jewish schools — an amount that’s a significant increase over the $38,000 that the Jewish Community Endowment Fund’s Kohn Fund has allocated annually for the special education community. The current budget serves a population of 185 kids in congregational schools aided by the S.F.-based BJE. However, that number is skewed, according to Flora Kupferman, the BJE’s special education consultant.
Kupferman pointed out that there are many more children in the Bay Area’s Jewish community with special needs but an exact number is difficult to ascertain because they exist as a minority within a minority — as an almost “invisible population.”
Lack of visibility wasn’t an issue for Chouraki, who finally pulled her son out of a local Jewish day school after prolonged wrangling with the administration.
“The school’s attitude was, ‘Take him outside and fix him, and once he’s fixed…then we’ll deal with him.’ It’s like they were talking about a car.
“Well, they’re not dealing with a car; they’re dealing with my treasure. And if they don’t recognize that, then they can’t have my treasure.”