Sderot: School system to go on strike
Southern town's Parents Association decides not to allow school year to open because schools were not properly fortified. 'It's like Russian roulette, what will students in classes that were not reinforced do?' parents ask
The Sderot Parents Association decided to put the education system in town on strike as of September 3, due to fear of rockets attacks on the local schools and kindergartens.
"Some of the facilities have been fortified, but unfortunately – this is not the kind of fortification we were hoping for," head of the Parents Association, Batia Katar, said.
"What was built here are walls reminiscent of the ugliest kind of jails, that sow fear in the hearts of the students. This looks more like Alcatraz than an educational institution," she stated.
The current strike is in effect a reenactment of the previous school year's opening. In order to prevent the same thing from happening, again it has been decided to launch the construction works several months ago, and NIS 210 million (about USD 48 million) have been allocated for the fortification of schools in Sdeort and the near-Gaza communities.
However, the budget has been cut by a third to a mere NIS 70 million (USD 16 million), and Katar claimed that she and her colleagues have already alerted in the past that this cut could create a problem and that the fortification of the buildings is likely to be partial.
Qassam lands in Sderot school (Photo: Amir Cohen)
The assumption of the Parents Association and the town's mayor, Eli Moyal, was that all the roofs of the educational facilities in Sderot will be fortified against Qassam attacks. In reality, things were quite different.
Katar said that "in one of the elementary schools, for example, there are walls facing the side from which rockets are being fired. The people of the Home Front Command placed a gigantic wall that runs along the entire school and that blocks 90 percent of daylight. The children will now be forced to spend their school hours across from a cement monster."
"In another area they fortified ever classroom at the end of the school, painting it in blue so that the students would be able to easily spot it during a Red Dawn siren and hide in it. But what about the rest of the students? It's like a roulette: Those who are in these classrooms are protected, and those who are not are doomed.
"They put supporting walls in the schools, and its looks absolutely horrible. It's unaesthetic, and beyond that – it frightens the students. These children are terrified as it is, and now they have to arrive at such monstrous buildings and experience such an experience?"
'Pure stupidity'
In addition, parents claim that NIS 3 million were invested in fortifying one of the schools, which is very old.
"We checked and were told that the cost of building a new school was NIS 5 million. Why didn’t they find another NIS 2 million to build a new school? This is pure stupidity. It would have been better to fortify half of the schools at this stage, but with proper fortification," Katar said.
Education Minister Yuli Tamir is expected to arrive for a visit in Sderot on Monday, and the members of the Parents Association plan to present their complaints before her.
In a meeting held by the association on Sunday, the parents decided to put the school system in the city on strike. The decision was not easy, as there are parents who prefer to have their children to stay in an organized place, even if it is partially fortified, than have them roam around the streets.
Eventually, the committee members decided to support the strike in a bid to end the fortification crisis, which has been going on for six years now. According to Katar, also senior members of the municipality, including the mayor himself, support the strike as they understand the distress.
Katar said that the schools would not open in Sderot "and we will continue the strike in the meantime without any time limit, until we receive clear answers."
