The school had been divided earlier in the school year, with roughly half remaining a secular school and half becoming a haredi girls school. But the manner in which that division took place – including city workers erecting makeshift walls without warning so the haredi students would not be able to see the secular students and teachers or interact with them in any way – sparked protests from secular parents and a court case. Even the playground was divided by an 8-foot wall so haredi children and teachers would not be 'corrupted' by the seculars.
Avove: the makeshift wall dividing the secular playground from the haredi playground in the Safot u'u’Tarbuyot School, 2014
After Long Fight, Disputed Secular School Building Given To Haredim
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The secular Safot u’Tarbuyot School (School for Languages and Culture) for pre-teens in the divided Israeli town of Beit Shemesh will now become exclusively haredi, the JTA reported.
The school had been divided earlier in the school year, with roughly half remaining a secular school and half becoming a haredi girls school.
But the manner in which that division took place – including city workers erecting makeshift walls without warning so the haredi students would not be able to see the secular students and teachers or interact with them in any way – sparked protests from secular parents and a court case. Even the playground was divided by an 8-foot wall so haredi children and teachers would not be 'corrupted' by the seculars.
The school is located at the edge of what has become over the past decade and a half a haredi neighborhood.
Beginning with the new school year late this summer, the secular children will be moved next year to a repurposed building elsewhere in town and the haredi girls school, Mishkenot Daat, will get the whole disputed building to itself.
It is unclear from the JTA’s report where in the town the secular school will be relocated. The new location of the secular school – which had been located in that disputed school building for decades – had been a bone of contention between secular parents and teach and the state, on one hand, and the haredi-controlled Beit Shemesh town government on the other. Secular parents and teachers claimed previous proposals by the town to relocate the secular school involved the secular school moving to unkept and very diminished facilities.