Minister of Science (HaBayit HaYehudi) Professor Daniel Hershkowitz has undertaken the battle on behalf of parents who feel they are paying too much for their children’s schooling. A number of parents presented the minister with a petition signed by 4,700 parents of children in dati leumi schools above elementary school. They call on the minister to assist the dati leumi community to lower the tuition of schools, explaining they must pay for their children’s schooling from 7th grade while public schools are free. Some of the parents signed on the petition explain that today, it is no longer just a matter of principle but they simply cannot afford the cost in today’s difficult economic times.

They explain that as a result of last year’s social economic protests, a committee was established to probe and report on the school tuition issue by the end of three months but that deadline has long passed and no report was filed.

The minister explains that one of the problems is that the Ministry of Education bases its funding on the number of students, not classrooms, and with many dati leumi schools hosting separate classes there is not enough funding to meet today’s current reality. He feels that in addition, the education budget fails to take the dati leumi realities into account, namely this tzibur’s desire to increase the number of classroom hours above that which the system budgets. He feels the ministry should pick up the funding slack, the extra hours that are given to the religious state schools.

He has met with parent representatives and they agreed to launch their ‘share the burden’, referring to dati leumi state run schools. He pointed out that while the chareidi education budget increased by 46%, the dati leumi budget was cut by almost 80% per student.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)