Majority of evacuated families lack school supplies, 20% don’t know where kids will go to school – survey

Ahead of the new school year, which begins on Sunday, a survey shows that a majority of Israeli families evacuated from the northern conflict zone lack school supplies for their kids, and a significant minority don’t know which school their children will attend.

A full 60% of northern families “reported a lack of school supplies to provide for their children,” and 20% of evacuated northern parents said “they have no idea where their children will be studying come the first day of school,” according to a press release from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ).

The IFCJ, which has provided significant assistance to evacuees, commissioned the survey from the Geocartography Group, an Israeli research institute, which conducted the online survey of over 800 adult residents, both Arab and Jewish, in August, the statement says.

The survey found that among evacuee families from the north, who have been scattered throughout Israel since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict in late October, 35% of parents said their children will attend a local school where they are currently living, 32.5% said their children would attend a temporary school set up for evacuee students, and 20% were still uncertain where their children would attend school. A small minority, 2.5%, said they didn’t expect their children to attend school.

The survey also found that a full 82.5% of parents evacuated from the north said “their children are expressing more concerns and difficulties” about their situation compared to last year, and 65% said their children are “expressing higher levels of anxiety and fear.”

More than half of survey respondents felt that the high cost of living has hurt their financial ability to provide a good education for their children, and 82% of evacuated parents said they have had to cut back on buying clothes due to economic reasons.