By MICHAEL GREENclassroom 88 224(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Mona Kader is confident about the type of education she wants for her two children: "I don't want them to stay at home or to run around and be street kids. I want my children to be good people, so they must learn and be at school."
But nearly two weeks into the new school year, her daughter, aged 15, has found herself on an extended summer vacation at home with her mother. Kader's son, a year younger than his sister, has been more fortunate, having secured a place at the Coptic College in the Old City where the family lives.
Although he, too, is still waiting to join the other students at his school because Kader, a single mother currently out of work, couldn't raise the NIS 10,000 fee on time needed to register for the new semester at the private school. He will begin at the school in the near future.
"What can I say? Her brother is going to school and she is still at home. I'm worried about her, she is getting depressed," says Kader.
Kader's children are among many who have found themselves left behind in the rush to catch the bus to school.
On Sunday, a group of around 60 parents and children from east Jerusalem gathered outside the Jerusalem Municipality offices with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the Community Action Center at Al-Quds University, to protest at not having being allocated a school place this year.
The parents are among many who, like Kader, feel frustrated at the continued underinvestment in education in the city's Arab communities which has left many children without a school place, or forcing parents to fork out for private education instead.
Of the 88,000 Arab children in Jerusalem, 9,000 are not enrolled in any type of educational framework, according to a report published by ACRI in June.
One parent who has been more fortunate than Kader is Basem Kawasme, whose four girls, aged nine to 15, successfully secured places in state schools this semester.
Two of the girls have started at a school in Beit Hanina, and another is studying in the Old City, where the fourth is also registered but is still waiting to begin classes.
Kawasme rates the school in Beit Hanina as "very good," but berates the one-hour round-trip from their home. "I live in Shuafat, not Beit Hanina. There are schools in Shuafat and my children should be at school here in our neighborhood," he says.
Nevertheless, Kawasme says that the situation has improved significantly since the previous school year when his children had to leave home at 6 a.m. each day to travel to school in Sur Bahir on the opposite side of Jerusalem from where the family moved a year ago. "They [the municipality] were supposed to move them to a new school, but there wasn't room. It was very hard for them, they suffered for the whole year."
The Jerusalem Municipality has made some investments recently in the provision of education for Jerusalem's Arab children but, despite this, parents have little hope that this will reverse the gap with their Jewish peers.
"There have been a few changes, but most of the problems are continuing. The municipality is just addressing temporary issues, not the overall problem," says Abdul Karim Lafi, chairman of the Union of Parents Committees in East Jerusalem Schools.
Melanie Takefman, international spokesperson for ACRI, agrees. "There haven't been any major changes. Nothing has changed in terms of the municipality's policy, so we expect more of the same."
For the city's Arab schoolchildren, "more of the same" means trying to get an education, despite what ACRI describes as a "critical" shortage of classrooms, currently totaling around 1,500, which is predicted to rise to 1,900 by 2010.
According to data from the municipality, 50 percent of Arab children drop out after the seventh grade (age 12) compared to 7.3% in the city's Jewish sector. Lafi adds that the quality of education in east Jerusalem is far lower than that of Palestinians living in the West Bank.
SITTING BEHIND the desk at his office in Beit Hanina, Lafi, an architect by trade, lists a number of new schools that have been built by the municipality in recent years or are currently under construction in east Jerusalem.
Arab areas set to benefit include Ras al-Amud near the Old City, and Sur Bahir, where one of two new schools can already be seen at the entrance to the neighborhood.
Lafi acknowledges that the new schools will benefit local residents, but laments their location in the south and center of the city.
"It is a partial solution in the south, but it won't solve the problems in the north," he says, adding that demand for spaces in school is concentrated in north Jerusalem.
"We're satisfied with the buildings, but with not the standard of education," he adds, noting that an Islamic Wakf girls school in Sur Bahir was rated the best in east Jerusalem, whereas the municipality-run school in the same neighborhood was rated the worst.
According to Lafi, a 2001 court case against the Education Ministry found that 245 classrooms should have been built in east Jerusalem by 2005, but so far only 37 have been constructed by the municipality.
"The Jerusalem Municipality is promoting a long-term program to establish educational buildings for the absorption of east Jerusalem pupils. In the framework of the program there is an agreement with the Ministry of Education and the Prime Minister's Office to receive a budget for the establishment of 80 new classrooms for east Jerusalem pupils," the municipality wrote in a statement.
"With the start of the 2008/2009 school year, the Jerusalem Municipality is going to open three new school buildings, including 42 classrooms in addition to many other rooms," the statement read. "Also, a rented school building will be opened that is suited to the those on the other side of the security barrier. The building includes 20 classrooms in addition to other rooms. In addition, there are a number of buildings that are in the construction or planning stage."
The municipality's intention to build a new school in the Shuafat refugee camp has Lafi's support, although he slams its proposed location near a metal factory and an army checkpoint, raising fears of both industrial pollution and friction between schoolchildren and soldiers.
In the meantime, the shortage of classrooms has led many state schools to resort to teaching pupils in residential buildings.
"The municipality is always playing games," says Lafi. "We go to them and they say you must talk to the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education say it's okay with us [to build more schools] and tell us there's a problem with the Ministry of Finance. They tell us that they have the funding available, but the municipality won't give the land for schools. We're going around in circles."
In previous years ACRI has petitioned the Jerusalem Municipality and the Education Ministry on behalf of children who were not allocated a place in state-funded schools.
Following a petition last year for 33 east Jerusalem children, the Jerusalem Administrative Court ruled in their favor. Twenty-six of them were successfully integrated into public schools in November after spending two months without formal education, while the other seven were forced to enroll in private schools.
In separate petitions, ACRI also succeeded in securing reimbursements for parents who were forced to pay for private schools because the municipality failed to provide their children with places in the public school system.
"It's a black-and-white case. The municipality must provide school places by law. Some parents spend all of their money on private education and we think the municipality should reimburse them because it's their fault," says Takefman, who adds that, regardless of individual successes, the bigger picture remains the same.
"The overriding goal is for the municipality to build more schools and invest in the general infrastructure in east Jerusalem, and not just to resolve problems on a one-to-one basis by going to court."
For parents like Kader and Kawasme, their hopes for education are simple. "We shouldn't have to go to the end of the world. I want schools like those in the rest of the world, not just for my children, but for everyone in east Jerusalem," says Kawasme. "I go to Jewish neighborhoods and see the schools and facilities there. I just want the same for my children."
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