Posted on 09/01/24
| News Source: Times of Israel
Over two million children began a new school year on Sunday morning while another half a million stayed at home, their classrooms shuttered due to a teachers’ strike.
Intense, last-minute negotiations between the Education Ministry and the Secondary Schools Teachers Association on Saturday night failed to reach a breakthrough in a long-running dispute over wages and work contracts, leading the union to go ahead with a promised strike that was officially announced on Thursday.
“Around half a million students from 10th to 12th grade” are affected by the strike, the Education Ministry confirmed to The Times of Israel on Sunday morning.
Some 514,000 students are registered at high schools for the upcoming school year and 335,000 at middle schools, according to ministry statistics.
In total, there are 2,558,000 children in the school system, including 535,000 children in kindergarten and state daycare. A total of 1.174 million are registered for elementary school.
As schools opened Sunday morning, some 179,300 children started first grade. At the other end of the system, there are 144,000 students registered for 12th grade this year, their final year.
Some 526,000 students are registered in the state-run ultra-Orthodox education track, and 530,000 in the Arabic track, the ministry said. In total, the system supports 5,743 schools, 22,000 kindergartens and 5,533 daycare centers, with a budget for the 2024-25 school year of NIS 83.6 billion ($23 billion).
The teachers’ strike impacted grades 10-12 nationwide, though institutions dedicated to special education students were excluded. Some 9th-grade classes were also affected in certain schools, at the discretion of school principals.
The strike was not in effect in some areas in the north and south of the country amid the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip and spiraling violence with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The threat of rocket attacks from Gaza remains, while Hezbollah has carried out near-daily rocket and drone attacks since October, when the war started with the terror group Hamas’s devastating attack on Israel.
The teachers union said there would be no strike in Merhavim, Ofakim, Netivot, Ein Habesor, Sha’ar Hanegev, Shikma, and Sderot, all in the south, as well as Majdal Shams, Kabir, and Nofei Golan in the north.