Education Ministry to provide free daycare for evacuee toddlers

Young children of families who have been evacuated from their homes will receive free daycare, the Education Ministry announces.

“The state will fully finance alternative care programs for toddlers up to the age of three, whose families had to evacuate their homes due to the war. The funding will continue for the entire duration of their displacement from home,” the ministry says.

It also says an agreement has been reached so that children enrolled in subsidized day care centers throughout Israel will not have to pay during periods when the centers “are closed for security concerns.”

In the same announcement, the ministry notes that a new school is to open this week in the Dead Sea area to serve evacuated students who have relocated there, and another new school is to open “in the coming days” in Eilat, where the population has doubled in size due to the influx of internally displaced citizens.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, some 250,000 Israelis, from communities bordering Gaza and along the Lebanon border, have been displaced from their homes.