The Jerusalem Municipality announced during the summer it was looking to borrow money to build badly-needed classrooms in the city amid a report there is a need for an additional 3,000 regulation classrooms.
What began as a petition against Jerusalem City Hall to benefit the Arab sector will also be bringing some relief to the chareidi sector. A PTA in the capital took the city to court; to the High Court of Justice, explaining there is a shortage of 2,000 classrooms in eastern Jerusalem, primarily in the Arab sector, as well as a shortage of 1,600 classrooms in the western capital, primarily in the chareidi sector. The dire shortage results in opening illegal classrooms in apartments and other structures, classrooms that fail to meet basic criteria and compelling students to deal with severe overcrowding and substandard conditions.
In the city’s response to the High Court it stated there is a plan to build 2,200 classrooms at a cost of NIS 2.2 bullion and this week, the city’s Finance Committee established a credit line with banks in the amount of NIS 350 million to move the project forward.
The money will be used to build classrooms that have already been approved with the understanding the city will be reimbursed by the national government in the future. Whatever will occur between the Jerusalem and national government, it does appear that the city will finally be moving ahead towards significantly resolving the critical shortage of regulation classrooms in these two sectors. No timetable for the construction has been announced at this time.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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The Jerusalem Municipality can actually save a lot of money. Rather than build new classrooms, it can put old school buildings to use that in the past served secular or national-religious children and now stand empty for lack of students. But when chareidi schools want to use these buildings for its students who suffer from overcrowded conditions, apartments and other unsuitable facilities, there are protests and demonstrations, letters and social media campaigns – heaven forfend that such a sacrilege to allowed to take place! Barkat is afraid of losing his voter base so he prefers to give in to the protesters – leaving those buildings empty and taking out loans to build new classrooms.