Jerusalem high schools call strike over lax security
Lack of funds leaves schools without guards for part of the day, say mayor and parents, even as violence continues to rage
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Jerusalem high schools will close Thursday in a protest strike over a lack of funds for school guards, amid what officials termed a deteriorating security situation.
Some 400 Jerusalem schools are defined by police as in need of permanent security, but declining budgets in recent years have cut short the number of hours that guards are present at the schools.
Guards finish their shifts at 1:30 p.m., the municipality’s Education Authority said in a Wednesday letter to high school principals.
“We see ourselves committed to providing the schoolchildren of Jerusalem with a quality education,” the letter opened, “but even before that to providing them with security, especially in light of the deterioration in the security situation in the city.”
Jerusalem has been rocked in recent weeks by a wave of violence, including a series of rock throwing attacks and stabbings over the last several days.
While guards leave at 1:30 p.m. “in most of the educational institutions in the city, classes continue until 4:30 p.m.,” the municipality letter explained.
Those three hours represent “a gap of over 20 million shekels in the security budget,” the city said.
“While the government shirks its responsibility for the security of [Jerusalem’s] educational institutions, we won’t neglect our children,” Mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement Wednesday. “Given the current reality, any delay [in finding a solution] is an abandonment of our children.”
With the city saying it is unable to find the missing funds in the municipal budget, Barkat and Parents Association chairman Paz Cohen announced jointly on Wednesday the start of an open-ended school strike in the capital.
“This isn’t a joke,” said Cohen. “It’s inconceivable that security guards leave in the middle of the school day and leave our schools unprotected.”
High schools will be closed Thursday, “unless announced otherwise in the media,” the city said.
For state schools, the strike includes grades seven to 12. In the Haredi education system, only the girls’ high schools will be striking. In the Arab school system, those schools that have no security guards at all will be joining the strike.
Special education classrooms and special-needs institutions of all types will open as usual.
The Thursday strike is only a first step, Barkat and Cohen said. The strike will expand to include elementary schools and other institutions if the funds for adequate security are not forthcoming from the finance and internal security ministries, they said.
The Times of Israel Community.