Special education in New York’s Jewish day-school community was a deep, hidden secret as recently as a decade ago – but no more. In the past 10 years, individual Jewish day schools have begun providing services to learning-disabled students, and in the past few months, representatives from about two dozen schools in the area have come together to share ideas and map out plans for pooling their resources and regionalizing services.

Representatives of more than 20 Jewish day schools in New York City, New Jersey, and Long Island had their first meeting March 21 at the Manhattan Day School on the Upper West Side.

The principal of Manhattan Day, Rabbi Mordechai Besser, said that 10 years ago the parents of children with learning disabilities would wonder, “I don’t know what’s the matter with my Shmuley or why Gertrude’s failing.” He said sometimes the students would stick it out. Other times they would transfer to public schools, where they would find peers who shared their problems, and high-quality services were offered.

The dean of the Sinai Special Needs Institute, Laurette Rothwachs, who helped organize the meeting, said: “Years ago, when you were told that your child had a disability, it was more of a sentence, and you kind of gave up. Now they’re saying, ‘I need to advocate for my child.'”

Rabbi Besser said attitudes have changed recently as individual schools managed to convince families that about 15% of Jewish students – just like the general population – have some sort of learning disability. He said the schools have also convinced parents to “come out of the closet” and acknowledge that their children need special help.

“It was a very slow process,” he said. “Parents realized that the good they could derive from taking advantage of the services that are available outweighed the negative connotations of their child having the stigma of being learning-disabled. It took years.”

Although individual schools have broken down some barriers in recent years, Rabbi Besser said, the schools in the region have largely operated within their own bubbles, rarely sharing best practices or resources.

“Nobody’s really gotten together. … There’s very little cross-pollination,” he said. “There’s a lot of duplication. The needs are expanding, and there isn’t that much money available. How much better would we do if somebody organized us and avoided the duplication in services?”

Ms. Rothwachs, whose New Jersey school caters to special-education students and draws pupils from as far away as Brooklyn, said the movement to pool ideas and services stems from a feeling that the Jewish day schools could do better if they worked together, rather than in isolation. That might mean creating regional hubs for certain programs – such as the autism program that exists at her school. It might also mean pooling resources for professional development for teachers or programs for parents.

“I think the schools are just exploring the options,” she said. “There must be ways that if we worked together, we could be doing a better job by taking a leadership role in the community.”

The group is planning to seek feedback from parents and to meet again to continue the planning process.

The executive director and dean of education at Kulanu Torah Academy in Cedarhurst, Long Island, Beth Raskin, who participated at the forum, said: “The idea of collaboration between all of the yeshivas is really exceptional.”

But she said the meeting was just a first step.

“I think what we certainly would like to see happening next is we’d like some plans made for solid teacher education in the yeshiva community for all teachers to get a better understanding of the diverse learner,” she said. “As teachers, as educators, it becomes our responsibility to understand how to reach the students so the learning environment is one that is meaningful to both the teacher and the student.”

The initiative mirrors a national trend toward identifying learning disabilities and providing appropriate services to children.

The executive director of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, Rabbi Joshua Elkin, said: “The tendency to collaborate is really something that’s starting to pick up steam.” The Boston-based partnership is creating a compendium of noteworthy practices at schools around the country, which it will distribute this year.

Also, last month, the director of special-education services for the Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Boston, Sandy Miller-Jacobs, convened members of a consortium of special educators in central agencies for Jewish education from across the country to discuss special education at day schools.

She said the problem that educators across the country are grappling with isn’t dealing with children with severe mental and physical disabilities. Rather, it is tweaking the dual curriculum of the day schools to accommodate children with more minor disabilities.

“We’ve been trying to really look at the kids who are moderate. … They need more resources than what the special educator can provide. And those kids tend to either choose to leave the school or feel that they’re being asked to leave the school. Those are the students that we’re really trying to reach out to, because we feel that we want to retain those students. Those are students who can benefit from the curriculum.”

Rabbi Elkin said one reason Jewish communities nationwide are discussing what he called “diverse learners” is to try to expand enrollment at Jewish schools.

“One way to grow enrollment is to make day schools more capable of accommodating a wider range of learners successfully and thereby holding on to those students, to those learners, for a longer number of years,” he said.

He said another reason for the movement is the increasing numbers of diagnoses and the increasing demand for services.

Rabbi Elkin said parents are saying to him: “If you’re really a school for the Jewish community, our child should be able to have a place.”