Israeli school year starts after teacher strike threat averted last minute

Students were gifted bracelets by anti-bullying campaign

The Israeli school year started on Friday morning as 2.5 million children headed back to schools and kindergartens after a long summer vacation.

Some 181,000 first graders began their studies in 5,560 schools, to be taught by 231,000 educational staff, according to the Ministry of Education.

The schoolchildren in the “Almog” school in Ma’ale Adumim, a town just east of Jerusalem, were joined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Yoav Kish on their first day.

Netanyahu told the children that each of them “has extraordinary possibilities,” and asked them to look left and right: “Look at your friends, at the children here… I ask you to look out for each other, be friends with each other, study well, listen to the teachers and be good children to each other."

Kisch then showed Netanyahu the bracelet on the hand of the boy who was sitting between the two and said that all the children received a bracelet that said, “We do not give a hand to a boycott,” part of an anti-bullying campaign.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the schools in Israel “an agent of community-building,” in an op-ed published in the Jerusalem Post.

“The crisis gripping Israel these past months has highlighted how indispensable learning to listen, hear, and engage in conversation with each other is to us as a collective,” he added.

The timely start of the school year was only confirmed on Thursday evening, as the Education and Finance ministries signed a last-minute agreement with the Teachers' Union.

The sides agreed to raise teachers’ salaries by NIS 2,000 a month (about $527), but teachers will be required to work an extra hour a week - 25 instead of 24. In addition, 2,000 teachers will be recruited to help fill a nationwide shortage.

According to a report by the Times of Israel, the elementary school system alone is missing around 3,000 teachers, while the high school system is missing about 20% of teaching positions.

In an interview with Channel 12 news, Kisch disputed those numbers and claimed that the shortfall numbered about 1,500 teachers out of a total of some 250,000 teachers throughout the country’s different state school systems.