Israel’s school year began today and secular parents in the secular/haredi battleground of Beit Shemesh and teachers in the secular public school the parents' children attend went on strike to protest the haredi-controlled city’s last minute decision to cut their school building in half and give half of the divided building to haredim.
Riot Erupts Over Beit Shemesh School Cut In Half By City For Haredim
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Israel’s school year began today and secular parents in the secular/haredi battleground of Beit Shemesh and teachers in the secular public school the parents' children attend went on strike to protest the haredi-controlled city’s last minute decision to cut their school building in half and give half of the divided building to haredim, Ha'aretz reported.
To city erected a solid metal dividing wall down the middle of the schoolyard and stationed guards at the School for Languages and Cultures to forcibly separate secular and haredi students.
The city said the decision – made without notifying the secular parents and teachers – was taken because of a severe shortage of classroom space in haredi schools. The secular school allegedly had many empty classrooms and is located in what is now the heart of the heavily haredi Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood. Even so, almost all of the new haredi students attending the school are from other parts of the city and have to be bused to school each day.
Israel’s Ministry of Education sided with the secular parents and forbade the city from dividing the building. It reportedly threatened to cut the city’s funding if it ignored the order and divided the building. The city, predictably, ignored both the order and the threat and cut the building in half anyway. The Ministry of Education reportedly offered the city another building to use for a haredi school, but the city refused that offer.
The secular parents kept their children home from school and outraged secular parents and the city’s non-haredi political opposition demonstrated at the newly divided school Sunday against what they called a haredi “takeover” of the city. Rioting erupted, three secular teachers and one secular parent were injured, and police reportedly detained several people for questioning – something they have rarely done when haredim rioted.
Tatiana Illouz, head of the secular school’s parents committee, said the classrooms given to haredim were not actually empty and unused and instead were music rooms, computer labs and other specialized classrooms.
“There are regular classrooms and there are specialized classrooms for computers and music, but the school isn’t empty. We’re willing to talk about moving to a new place, but not through a coup like this.…I love Beit Shemesh, but nobody will harm my children,” Illouz reportedly said, adding that until Wednesday, none of the secular parents, teachers or the school’s administration knew the building was being divided.
But on Wednesday, less than five days before the beginning of the school year, city officials summoned the secular school’s administration to an urgent meeting and told them the city had decided to give half of the school’s classrooms and half the school’s playground to the haredi Mishkenot Da’at girls school.
“We applied [for help] to anyone we could, and the Education Ministry said this process [of dividing the school by the city] was improper. So we thought that everything was okay. And then suddenly, on Sunday when the teachers were preparing for the school year, they heard noise. A contractor had come with guards who cut the chain on the [schoolyard’s] gate. The teachers blocked it [to try to prevent their entry] and called the police,” Illouz said.
She and three teachers were injured when the workers and guards tried to push them aside and enter the school.
“At first the police evicted the workers and guards, but a few hours later, they let them enter [the school] and start work. We didn’t even manage to extract equipment that remained in the classrooms. It was violent,” Illouz said.
The secular School for Languages and Cultures has reportedly had a shortage of students for years. Parents accuse the city of intentionally allowing this problem to grow worse through intentional inaction and other means so that it can eventually give the school building entirely to haredim.
“There are also empty classrooms at haredi schools, but there, because of internal power struggles, they don’t bring in students [to fill them]. Last night we discovered that they were bringing equipment to divide the school. We tried to prevent this with our bodies, but the police said the municipality was entitled to do it. They removed us at midnight,” city council opposition leader and former mayoral candidate Eli Cohen told Ha’aretz.
The city says it divided the secular school because it “mitigates the severe injustice” of having a school meant for about 500 students but is used for only 144.
“Most of the building stands empty…[this is a] double absurdity [because the vast majority of its secular students are bused in from other neighborhoods]. The neighborhood where the building is located has a shortage of hundreds of classrooms, while in the neighborhoods of Old Beit Shemesh, where the school’s [secular] students live, the reverse is true: Many dozens of classrooms stand empty,” the city said in a statement that also claims the city invited the secular school’s principle to come to city and work out a mutually acceptable solution, but the principle “chose to make herself conspicuously absent, leaving the city with no choice but to do its duty and its job for all the city’s students. It’s a great pity that interested parties have chosen to inflame the atmosphere with violence, illegally and criminally, instead of acting responsibly and practically.”
The Ministry of Education reportedly told Ha’aretz it plans to issue a closure order for Mishkenot Da’at, the haredi school, because it was opened illegally on the grounds of another school. It also said it will not allow the haredi school to remain at the secular school, and said it will use every means at its disposal to assure that.
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