On Sunday morning, over two million children began their new school year, while half a million remained at home because their classrooms were closed due to a teachers’ strike.
Despite intense, last-minute discussions between the Education Ministry and the Secondary Schools Teachers Association on Saturday night, a resolution to the ongoing wage and contract dispute could not be reached. This impasse led the union to follow through on their planned strike, which they had officially declared on Thursday.
The Education Ministry confirmed to The Times of Israel on Sunday that “around half a million students from 10th to 12th grade” were impacted by the strike.
According to ministry data, 514,000 students are enrolled in high schools for the upcoming school year, and 335,000 are in middle schools. In total, the education system serves 2,558,000 children, which includes 535,000 kids in kindergarten and state-run daycare facilities. There are 1.174 million children registered for elementary school.
As schools reopened on Sunday morning, approximately 179,300 children entered first grade. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, 144,000 students are registered for their final year in 12th grade.
The ministry also reported that 526,000 students are enrolled in the state-run ultra-Orthodox education system, and 530,000 are part of the Arabic track. In all, the education system encompasses 5,743 schools, 22,000 kindergartens, and 5,533 daycare centers, with a budget of NIS 83.6 billion ($23 billion) for the 2024-25 school year.
The teachers’ strike primarily affected grades 10-12 across the nation, although special education institutions were exempt. In some schools, 9th-grade classes were also disrupted, depending on the decisions of the school principals.
The strike did not affect certain regions in the north and south of the country due to the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip and escalating violence with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The threat of rocket fire from Gaza remains, while Hezbollah has been conducting near-daily rocket and drone assaults since October, when the war began following Hamas’s devastating attack on Israel.
The teachers union announced that there would be no strike in areas including Merhavim, Ofakim, Netivot, Ein Habesor, Sha’ar Hanegev, Shikma, and Sderot in the south, as well as Majdal Shams, Kabir, and Nofei Golan in the north.
In the northern regions, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and local security teams provided protection at school bus pickup locations and within the schools themselves.
The IDF also expanded the coverage of its air defense units to safeguard the routes used by school buses. Typically, air defense systems only respond to incoming threats if they are likely to strike urban areas.
Additionally, authorities have installed more small public bomb shelters in the north. However, Kan, a public broadcaster, reported that many parents are still hesitant to send their children to school, feeling that these measures are insufficient.
Meanwhile, about 17,000 school-aged children are among the tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes near the Lebanese border. These students will continue to attend local schools or temporary institutions near the locations where they have been living since October, whether in rented apartments, hotels, or relatives’ homes.
The teachers’ union has been in ongoing talks with the education and finance ministries, pushing for retroactive salary increases and other benefits that were agreed upon before the last school year but were postponed due to Hamas’s attack and the outbreak of war.
A central issue in the negotiations is the union’s demand for a collective wage agreement, while the government favors individual contracts for teachers due to budgetary constraints.
Despite efforts to reach a deal on Shabbos, no progress was made.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has pledged not to pay striking teachers, though Kan reported that the union has millions of shekels in a compensation fund that could be used to pay the striking educators. However, sources from the Education Ministry estimate that these funds would only last for a few days.
Strikes over wage disputes that delay the start of the school year have become a recurring issue in Israel.
Last year, high school teachers and government officials reached a last-minute agreement to increase salaries, narrowly avoiding a strike that would have delayed the start of classes.
However, the government later failed to honor those agreements, attributing the breach to budget cuts necessitated by the war.
In the 2024 budget, millions of shekels were cut from government ministries, including NIS 38,283,000 ($10.3 million) from the Education Ministry in July, to reallocate funds for residents displaced from the south and north due to the war.
{Matzav.com Israel}
