Members of the opposition in the city council of Beit Shemesh are claiming that nepotism played an important role in giving our permits to build classrooms and whole schools to those close to the city’s Mayor Aliza Bloch and to the appointee from the council in charge of education Yeshayahu Erenreich a representative on the council from Gur Chassidus.
According to the opposition, the issues have arisen in the neighborhoods of Ramat Avraham, and Avi Ezri, where the majority of the population are Litvaks, chassidim, and Sefardim. The opposition is claiming that proper classrooms are lacking for the thousands of students who live in these neighborhoods.
According to a source in the opposition, “A school with dozens of classrooms for students in the neighborhood of Ramat Avraham was supposed to be built. However, Erenreich and Bloch, by manipulating the political system were able to move the permits for the school to make sure that it was built in the Mizrach Shemesh neighborhood, to help their supporters.”
The same source claimed that a different school that was supposed to be built in Ramah Gimmel was moved to a different community of their supporters.
A spokesperson from the municipality responded and said: “Those people who make these claims are dealing with the theater for the absurd. It would be nice if they left their air-conditioned rooms once in a while and took a tour to see what is happening in the city. If they did, they would see that the locations mentioned in their letter of allegation are not options for construction at this time. That is in the best of cases. In the worst-case scenario, these people are actively trying to confuse the public into believing a false fact when they know very well the current situation here. This seems to be the reason why the letter was submitted without a signature standing behind it, because the members of the city council, especially those who have held positions previously, know very well that this letter was not even worth the paper it was written on and should not have been written.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
I have lived in BS/RBS for over 25 years. No-one has done as much for Chareidi schools as Ehrenreich and those who live here know this very well. Those who know Ehrenreich can testify that he is above cheap politics and he should not be dragged into it.
It takes time for a neighborhood to get a school building and this is allocated by Misrad Hachinuch and not the Iriya
I am more than happy to ship the multiple schools on my street to these neighborhoods. Then perhaps I can get through the traffic, get into my parking lot, & on the way avoid hitting pedestrians who blindly walk in the street, double-parked cars, or cars that are parked on the sidewalk sticking out into the street.