I want to respectfully, but strongly, disagree with Beverly. Too many day schools try to be all things to all people. The majority of day schools in this country have fewer than 100 students enrolled. While the notion of being inclusive is high-minded and certainly to be commended, it is often an aspiration and not a reality. It seems to me a question of ethics as to whether a school can really provide for the special needs of a child whose parents and the school all would like to have enrolled in a Jewish day school. Too often the schools do not have the staff or the training to provide for the very special learning needs that students with special proclivities so desperately deserve.
Parents are often promised the world, but the reality is very different. A child in a specialized classroom within a day school is often thrown back into the regular classroom when there are schedule disruptions or the special education teachers are absent, and has no idea what is going on in the regular classroom. Teachers are often not equipped or trained to deal with the unique challenges of special needs children who need to function within a larger class of students with many different learning abilities and levels.
As a parent of a very special needs child myself, who saw him all the way through day school, through high school, and into a college which helped provide for his needs, I wonder whether I did not sacrifice my own son on my personal altar of Jewish commitment to the day school, especially since I was the head of the school. Perhaps he would have been better served in a special needs school, and on the high school level been better off in a vocational setting where he could have been trained in a craft or trade that would have ensured him being able to make a living.
With regard to the question about the wealthy family, I think that is also an ethical issue. If the school cannot meet that child’s needs, it would be unethical to entice the family into the school with all kinds of promises that his/her needs would be met. If on the other hand the family might be willing to provide the resources to the school not only for its own child, but for other children as well, and pioneer a program to really meet the needs of special students who often need one-on-one staffing or small team staffing, then that would be a wonderful outcome highly to be desired. There are many ways that our children can learn to love to be Jewish, but the day school is not the answer to every problem. Often, for children who have serious special needs, the frenetic schedule, the cacophony of languages, subject matters, and fast pace of instruction may really be the wrong place for that child. So it seems to me the ethical issues here are what is right for a given child, what is right for a given school, and how we honestly confront the parameters of what any one school can provide for all of its children.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2016 09:07AM by mlb.
