15 cities reject Education Ministry part-time reopening plan for schools

Over a dozen local authorities on Tuesday informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu they would not comply with the Education Ministry’s outline for reopening schools, which would see 4th to 10th graders in their communities return to class part-time.

The regional leaders — representing 15 cities in Israel, including Tel Aviv and Haifa — said the blanket plan for students to study on intermittent days was ineffective for students and parents, and called for a full reopening of schools in certain areas, with health precautions in place.

Representatives of local authorities called on the government to hold an urgent meeting to formulate a plan for a full return to classes for communities and neighborhoods where the virus outbreak is under control.

The officials criticized the Education Ministry’s gradual reopening plan in a letter to Netanyahu. The ministry announced Monday that students in 4th to 10th grades will return to school in a limited format.

In the letter, the leaders of the the Local Government Center, a nonprofit that represents local authorities, wrote, “the return outline for students in grades 4-10 does not constitute a return to studies and is not a solution for anyone.”

“The children are not guinea pigs and the parents are looking for real solutions,” said the letter, penned by the center’s leaders, Haim Bibas and Shai Hajaj. “The suggested solutions are unsatisfactory and in the absence of a realistic outline we will not return the 4th to 10th graders to school.”

“We won’t allow some students to come for one day a week and others to come for two days,” said Bibas, who also serves as the mayor of Modiin. “We demand a full opening of educational institutions in ‘green’ cities that have a low rate of morbidity, and a partial opening in ‘red’ cities that have a higher rate of infections.”

“Two and a half months into these events, it’s not possible to manage things with fear. We must give real solutions to parents,” he said.

A forum representing 15 cities in Israel backed the decision, meaning 4th to 10th graders in those cities will not return to studies Sunday. The forum includes Tel Aviv, Rishon Lezion, Petah Tikva, Ashdod, Netanya, Holon, Ramat Gan, Haifa, Beersheba and Herzliya.

Israel’s education system was shut down in mid-March with teachers and pupils switching to remote learning methods instead. As other sectors of society and commerce have been permitted to reopen, there has been increasing pressure from local authorities and parents to restart schools.

Under the Health Ministry plan, students in 4th-6th grades will attend lessons for five to six hours a week, and 7th-10th graders will return for two to three days per week, the ministry said Monday.

Pre-schools, kindergartens, 1st-3rd grades and 11th-12th grades have already returned to classes over the past 10 days, albeit with class sizes capped and various social distancing and hygiene guidelines in place. Universities are only set to resume classes on June 14.

According to the Education Ministry announcement, classes for grades 4-12 will not exceed 20 students. Students will be required to wear masks if they cannot keep two meters apart from one another.

Under the plan, different grades will meet at different times or on different campuses in order to stagger attendance and avoid overcrowding in schools. That would see some students attending school on Fridays or later than normal, and others only attending a few days a week.

Following the plan’s release, Bibas said officials “have gone mad.”

“The plan presented to us tonight is way out of line and completely detached from reality,” Bibas said. “Students cannot come for one day a week, when others are coming for two days a week.”

“Either open the entire education system or don’t open it at all.”

He called on other local politicians to “apply all of the pressure necessary so that all children, and all parents, can return to normalcy as soon as possible.”

A request by the education and finance ministries to increase the size of 4th-6th grade classes in order to relieve some of the pressure was rejected by Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, according to Haaretz.

Bar Siman-Tov also rejected an Education Ministry proposal to allow a full return to middle and high school studies in communities with low infection rates.

On Tuesday the finance and education ministries will discuss a proposal to fully open kindergartens in municipalities where the virus has been brought under control.

Kindergartens are currently operating under a scheme that sees children divided into two groups, each of which only attends for half a week.

The announcement came as Health Ministry figures continued to show no more than a few dozen new infections daily. Israel has taken a series of steps in the last two weeks to begin gradually reopening its economy and rolling back restrictions on movement and small gatherings, with many clamoring for a swifter return to levels of service seen in pre-pandemic days.