New Jersey Jewish News Story

School for autistic kids to close in June

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

Hineni at Sinai, a school for children with autistic disorders housed at the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston, will close its doors in June.

“We don’t have the enrollment to maintain the school,” said Laurette Rothwachs, dean of the Sinai Special Needs Institute in Teaneck, with which Hineni is affiliated. “All of the parents want the school to stay open. But we’ve been struggling to get enrollment.”

The school, founded in 2002, was unable to achieve the required enrollment of 16 students within three years of opening. When the program is state-approved, any district can send a student, and tuition will be paid by the state. Without approval, parents can attempt to convince their districts to send students, but the district has to pick up the cost.

At $65,000 per year per student, the approximate cost of Hineni, that’s an uphill battle, according to Rothwachs. “Those districts’ mission is to offer an appropriate program for their students. They don’t have to offer the best program; it’s costly to run the program we’re running.”

After three years, the school had 12 or 13 students, according to board chair David Shapiro, who is also the board chair of Sinai. The state declined to approve the school, and Hineni continued on its own. Now, its enrollment is down to seven, and the school is running a yearly deficit of $120,000 to $150,000.

“I hate to close a program like this. It’s what we’re about,” said Shapiro. “But we just couldn’t afford to maintain that kind of deficit, with no end in sight. I was the one pushing to try one more year, one more year. We hoped and we hoped. We went above and beyond what we have to keep the doors open. It’s just not happening.”

Hineni held its first graduation ceremony in June 2005. At that time, Rothwachs told NJ Jewish News that the program was facing challenges of funding and staffing.

The nonsectarian program offers Applied Behavior Analysis, a specific approach to autism based on the theory that behavior rewarded is more likely to be repeated than behavior ignored. It has been the only ABA school in New Jersey housed in a yeshiva.

The students currently enrolled will have to find alternatives after the school year ends.

“This is a very specialized type of education,” said Rothwachs. “ABA takes specially qualified professionals in a one-to-one ratio for every child. We will help families transition as best we can.”

“The fact that Hineni at Sinai emerged as one of the top ABA programs for children with autism spectrum disorder was a miracle, and the notion that it will be closing its doors at the end of this year is tragic,” said Barbara Listhaus of Livingston, who was instrumental in starting the program and whose son was among the 2005 Hineni graduates. “It is sad to think that there will be so many others who will not be able to receive the necessary intervention once the school closes. There aren’t enough ABA programs, let alone great programs like Hineni, for all the children who have a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.”

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