Education panel visits Gaza border schools

‘These are people who showed great resilience and nationalism,’ says MK Mitzna.

By LAHAV HARKOV
Amram Mitzna (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Amram Mitzna
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Children and teens on the Gaza border developed great resilience, Knesset Education Committee chairman Amram Mitzna (Hatnua) said Wednesday, after visiting schools in the South.
Mitzna and MK Shimon Ohayon (Yisrael Beytenu) rode on a school bus from Kissufim at 7 a.m. to the Nitzanei Eshkol elementary school in the Eshkol region, where they met with students and teachers.
From there, they went to a nearby high school and spoke to 12th-graders, and then they visited a preschool in Kibbutz Be’eri.
“I left with the sense that the older students are less interested in what happened and want to know what will happen in the future, especially how long the cease-fire will be,” Mitzna said. “These are people who showed great resilience and nationalism.”
Teachers in the region told Mitzna that many of the students’ parents are experiencing economic problems because they were unable to work for two months and had to evacuate to towns in the North.
“We treat the entire population as if it has post-traumatic stress disorder,” Eshkol Regional Council Education Department Manager Yael Adar said. “We will take care of everyone and slowly, slowly narrow the care. There are two years of serious healing ahead of us.”
Following the trip to the South, Mitzna said he was impressed by how quickly the schools returned to their routine.
“We will try to help the residents deal with the situation forced on them however we can,” he said.
Mitzna called on Education Minister Shai Piron to work with him to find implementable solutions, like giving scholarships to students in the area and reducing the size of classes.