Petah Tikva parents mull school strike unless Ethiopian kids admitted

Petah Tikva parents on Monday threatened to strike in the beginning of the school year next week, unless private religious schools in the city agreed to enroll Ethiopian students.

A municipal committee of parents gathered at a panel organized by state-religious schools to protest discrimination against students of Ethiopian origin within the private religious school system. The panel was joined by members of the Ethiopian community who have also voiced support for the strike.

Private religious schools in the city said this year they would not accept the students assigned to them by the municipality, preferring to enroll only those they feel fit into their individual institutions.

The chairman of the parents' committee, Nir Orbach, demanded that the city begin practicing "egalitarian and balanced division of immigrant absorption." If the private schools did not take the children, Orbach warned, parents would "shut down the school system in the city."

Private schools in Petah Tikva are heavily subsidized by both the Education Ministry and the municipality. Education Ministry Director-General Shimshon Shoshani said last week that the schools refusing to enroll children on a discriminatory basis would be fined and could have their licenses suspended.

Last week, the Petah Tikva municipality ordered local private schools to enroll about 70 students of Ethiopian origin. Another 30 students were to be enrolled in the public Orthodox school system, where most Ethiopian-Israeli students study.

However, sources within the Education Ministry and the municipality said conversations with officials at private schools indicated that they would nevertheless refuse to enroll the children. Administrators at the city's public Orthodox schools said they would not accept the 30 children as planned.

"It's clear to everyone that the response to the enrollment instruction would be negative, but we had to go public with it to allow the Education Ministry to begin the process of imposing fines," a senior city official said.

As a result of the disagreement between the private schools and the city, at least 100 students of Ethiopian origin still do not know what school they will be attending when the year kicks off on September 1.