SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES: IDENTIFYING AND MEETING CRITICAL NEEDS

CJE’s special education services staff is working hard to enhance services to children with special needs, their teachers and families. Here are some of this year’s highlights:

SEEP
Special Education Enhancement Project (SEEP) grants, made possible through the generosity of the Charles Crane Family Foundation, funded $100,000 worth of projects in schools to increase the capacity to effectively integrate and serve students with a variety of special needs.

SEEP grants are being successfully  implemented at nine area Jewish day schools, early childhood  centers and religious schools. Temple Isaiah Religious School Director,  Marge Gold, reports that the SEEP grants have enabled the synagogue to fully  include every child with special needs enrolled in their religious school and  preschool. The students receiving inclusion support are more comfortable with their peers and participating in synagogue life. Mrs. Faye Friedman, Interim  Administrator of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Academy, summed up her school’s success with the adaptive technology  they implemented  “if they could see just one little seven-year-old  boy for whom writing is a major challenge using the Alpha Smart (purchased with a SEEP grant) to take his spelling test, they would know they got their money’s worth!”

STARS
The new STARS Program (Students Testing Assistance, Referrals and Support) will launch in June. Also made possible by the Charles Crane Family Foundation, the goal of this program is to provide support to families and schools as they pursue assessments for students with suspected disabilities, as well as provide funding to ensure that families with financial need can have access to assessments that the school system does not provide.

Yad B’Yad: When Yellow and Blue Make Green – Learning Disabilities and Giftedness
More than 150 Jewish educators, professionals and parents representing day, congregational and preschools from across the Jewish ideological spectrum attended this year’s Yad b’Yad three-part workshop series. Participants left each session thirsty for more knowledge about these important topics—so much so that we can’t keep the 50 new books on these topics on our resource center shelves! Our goal for the workshop was to help participants adapt their teaching methods for use in an inclusive Jewish classroom. In addition, we continue to maintain our listserv that enables workshop participants to connect between sessions. Registered participants received a complimentary copy of the professionally published Let’s Talk and Listen Today! Calendar of Daily Activities for Teaching Listening and Language Skills, coauthored by our presenter, Dr. Jean Blosser, Ed.D.

PEN Project
This year, the PEN Project (Partnership for Educational Needs) expanded to include a self-contained general studies Gold Class for middle school boys with learning disabilities and Asperger’s Syndrome and an Academic Support Initiative providing inclusion facilitation for general studies for middle school girls. Both programs are housed in area Jewish day schools. The PEN Project continues to work toward ensuring that culturally appropriate educational options are available to children with disabilities in the Jewish community, with the hope that the initiative’s impact will continue to grow.

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