The haredi-controlled government of the City of Beit Shemesh has reportedly decided to move 150 secular children out of the Safot Vetarbuyot (Languages and Cultures) school in the Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood and put haredi girls in the school building in their place.
Beit Shemesh: Secular School Given To Haredim; Secular Students To Be Forced To Move To Distant, Decrepit School Building
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The haredi-controlled government of the City of Beit Shemesh has reportedly decided to move 150 secular children out of the Safot Vetarbuyot (Languages and Cultures) school building in the Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood and put haredi girls in the school building in their place – despite what a Jerusalem court and secular parents thought was an agreement made several months ago not to do so without providing the secular students a comparable facility.
The secular parents object to the move, Ha'aretz reported, and note that the building their children are being moved to is old and in disrepair. It also located in another area of the city, too far for the children to walk.
The head of the school’s parents’ committee accused the haredi-controlled city government of “setting the town on fire again.”
Haredi activists and extremists have been been working diligently for more than a decade to make the Ramat beit Shemesh neighborhood completely haredi.
Just before the school year started, the city government divided the secular school in half using fences and other physical barriers, and gave half of the building to a haredi girls school, Mishkenot Da’at.
That enraged both secular school parents and the Education Ministry, which went to court to get an injunction to stop the haredi girls school from using the property. The Jerusalem District Court eventually ruled the two schools could share the same premises – but it made that ruling only after the city government hastily removed the fence and other dividers.
Soon after the court’s ruling was issued, some reports say the city restored them.
Over the past few months, the secular parents have been negotiating with the city government and reached an agreement to move the secular Safot Vetarbuyot (Languages and Cultures) children to a haredi school with very low enrollment that is located in a secular area of the city.
But the city allegedly reneged on that agreement and decided to move the secular students to the Adihu School in the old part of town. That school building is old and in disrepair, and would need extensive updating and renovation – things the city will not be providing, at least in the immediate future.
“During the discussions with municipal officials we submitted a written proposal to relocate the secular school to a haredi school with few students in a secular area, in a new building that needs no renovation. A week ago we were informed they objected to this plan and want to move the school to an old structure that requires a great deal of money to get it up to a basic standard. It also requires transportation, because it’s difficult to get there. We don’t understand what it’s all about, our proposal was better,” Yaniv Fogel, head of the Beit Shemesh parents committee, told Ha’aretz.
The city’s education director Yesha’ayahu Ehrenreich said there was nothing the city could do to stop the move to the substandard building it itself ordered and now forced.
“The parents suggested an option we said we’d look into. But in any case we can’t stop the process of moving to Adihu at this stage. The children must know when they register that they won’t go to school in Ramat Beit Shemesh but in the old town. If we can’t grant the parents’ request, the children will go to Adihu and there’s nothing we can do. The parents are not a side in the matter, they don’t make the decisions, there’s a process that must be followed. The school must be renovated and we and the Education Ministry have undertaken to deal with it,” Ehrenreich said.
Because Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu called for snap elections and dissolved his coalition government, the Education Ministry is now under his Likud Party’s direct control, and Netanyahu is the acting minister for it.
Even before the he took that action, Netanyahu has for months openly tried to skirt High Court of Justice and lower court rulings haredim disagree with and has openly pandered to haredi political parties, because those haredi parties are his only natural Knesset allies.
So it is no surprise that the Education Ministry did a complete about face from its position taken before the government was dissolved by Netanyahu.
“In keeping with the court’s ruling, the ministry and municipality examined various options for schools in the various schools in Beit Shemesh. The solution for this school year appears to be moving the secular school Safot Vetarbuyot to the Adihu school building and merging the two, as well as renovating the building. The Haredi school Mishkenot Da’at will move into the premises now housing the Safot Vetarbuyot school,” the Education Ministry said.
Reform Rabbi Uri Regev, the president and CEO of the religious freedom advocacy organization Hiddush, said the government of the City of Beit Shemesh acted like a “street thug.”
“[The government of the City of Beit Shemesh] acted like a street thug when it set up the fence in the middle of the school. Now it’s rewarding itself for its thuggery. It’s taking advantage of the elections and the shift in the Education Ministry’s leadership to make a move of underhanded opportunism,” a very disgusted Regev told Ha’aretz.
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