Education Minister Yoav Kisch will present to the Knesset Education Committee on Wednesday new regulations intended to enable salary raises for thousands of teachers in the two major haredi elementary school systems, despite not having reached agreements with the Finance and Justice Ministries on a number of key issues.
Kisch announced the new regulations in a press briefing on Sunday. The regulations determined the manner in which teachers in the two haredi systems may join a salary agreement that began in the public school system in 2008 called Ofek Hadash (Hebrew for “new horizon”).
Ofek Hadash established teachers’ salaries based on their level of academic and professional training. It also introduced non-frontal teaching, such as paid one-on-one lessons, and set standards for schools’ infrastructure and teaching environments.
The two systems in play are Bnei Yosef, which is associated with the Shas party, and Hinuch Atzmai (Hebrew for “independent education”), which is associated with the Degel Hatorah party, a faction within United Torah Judaism, representing Lithuanian haredim (as opposed to hassidim).
Both systems are considered semi-private – they are fully funded by the state and are required to teach a core curriculum that includes English, Hebrew, science, and more, but are privately run while being subject to Education Ministry oversight.
The two systems exist alongside the haredi public school system branch, which is state-owned and run, and functions fully as part of Israel’s public school system, similar to the religious-Zionist public school branch.
Kisch said during the briefing that parallel to the semi-private systems entering Ofek Hadash, the haredi public school system will enjoy a significant increase in schools in the upcoming school year. These include 7,000 students in 25 new schools and 30 new preschools, according to the education minister.
Critics have argued that the two semi-private systems continue to receive state funding despite not actually meeting their requirements and that the oversight is ineffective. According to Kisch, the new regulations are aimed at solving these problems.
They require that these schools teach the full core curriculum aided by trained teachers based on Education Ministry standards; present a yearly plan for study based on clearly defined standards; provide the ministry with information regarding all of its staff and their professional background; to “open their gates to close ministry oversight”; and to take standardized national and international tests to gage progress.
In addition, the regulations determined that schools that do not meet the criteria will be removed for the remainder of the school year and that the ministry may block schools from entering the program if this may cause financial harm to the public school system. As part of Ofek Hadash, the teachers will also undergo periodic training to enable them to develop professionally and increase their salary.
The move will cost the state approximately NIS 600 million, which will come from coalition funds earmarked for this purpose in coalition agreements between the Likud and the haredi parties.
Justice and Finance Ministry officials pointed to several clauses as problematic.
The main one was that since the school systems currently do not have enough teachers with the necessary training to meet Ofek Hadash’s demands, a four-year interim period will apply, whereby teachers will receive benefits while undergoing training. Moreover, if the schools do not manage to reach Ofek Hadash standards in four years, the funding they receive beginning in the upcoming school year will be rescinded retroactively.
So, Finance and Justice Ministry officials argued that this essentially enables the haredi systems to receive the Ofek Hadash benefits without meeting the full core curriculum standard for the next four years. They argued that the schools should only be allowed to enter the program after they have met the standards instead.
Furthermore, the Hinuch Atzmai owes at least NIS 80 million to Israeli tax authorities, is facing six class action suits over alleged violations of employee’s rights, and is fighting against a court appeal to deem it bankrupt. Ofek Hadash would essentially grant the system an estimated 30% raise in state funding despite the fact that it is in financial straits and already owes the state an enormous sum, officials argued.
As specified by Deputy Knesset Speaker MK Moshe Tur-Paz (Yesh Atid), a member of the Knesset Education Committee and a former educator, “Kisch’s regulations are a sham. Their purpose is to render kosher an institution that has been proven to have many problems. The idea of giving more to systems that as it is have cheated the State of Israel for years, has not supplied the required core curriculum, and harmed the education of haredi children, is like allotting a prize to a criminal.
“The systems need to appoint a manager who ensures that they act appropriately.”
“If Kisch wants to care for them, the time has come for him to fix them, and get them a budget raise,” Tur-Paz said.
Shas’s Haim Biton, who is deputy education minister and responsible for the haredi school systems, has been acting on behalf of the two major systems, as has fellow Shas member and head of the Knesset Education Committee, MK Yossi Taieb.
Kisch has argued that Biton opposed his regulations and that this proved that they would cause real change. Tur-Paz, however, said that he “was sure” that the argument was “staged,” so that Kisch could repeat this argument in a future possible court case against the regulations.
The education minister’s office said in response to a query, “We are confident that the proposed regulations give the proper solution to all of the comments that were raised during talks with the Finance and Justice [Ministries] – a move that received the blessing of the Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.”
“There is a historic opportunity here, the first of its kind, to enter tens of thousands of haredi students into the circle of 100% core curriculum studies, with all of the accompanying economic benefits. This is without giving up on any standard set by the public system, including the Meitzav [a standardized national test] and teacher training.
“It is important to the haredi society and imperative to Israeli society. Furthermore, this process accelerates an accompanying process that will, according to our estimates, enter tens of thousands more students into the public haredi system, meaning frameworks fully owned by the ministry. The education minister is dedicated to this and acting on it,” Kisch’s office concluded.
