Last-day-of-school battle: 'No pay for teachers who don't show up'

Netanyahu advises ‘Plexiglass dividers’ as corona spikes * Death toll hits 302 * 182 new patients in 24 hours

By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN, GIL HOFFMAN
Pupils sitting behind partition boards made of plexiglass attend a class at a primary school (photo credit: REUTERS)
Pupils sitting behind partition boards made of plexiglass attend a class at a primary school
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The battle over when the last day of school will be for students continued on Monday, after Kobi Bar-Nathan, director of Salary and Employment for the Finance Ministry, said that teachers who choose not to teach an extra nine days will not be paid.
Bar-Nathan made the comment to Shmuel Abuav, director-general of the Education Ministry and Haim Bibas, chairman of the Local Authorities.
On Sunday, Education Minister Yoav Gallant announced that schools would be extended to make up for some of the days missed at the onset of the coronavirus crisis. According to Gallant, grades 7-10 will end school on July 1. Eleventh and 12th graders will complete their matriculation exams between June 22 and 27.
In response, Irgun Hamorim head Ron Erez accused the Finance Ministry of making empty threats and said that under no circumstances would his teachers attend school on the extra days, calling them “robbery.”
In an interview with the Hebrew website Ynet, Erez, whose organization overseas secondary and high schools, said that the challenge is that in the agreement made between the Teachers’ Union and the Finance and Health ministries there is a clause that states that the elementary schools do not need to extend classes if the secondary schools do not.
“There is no reason to associate these classes,” he said. “He should have consulted us,” Erez said, referring to Gallant.
The education minister said Sunday that Erez was invited but never attended negotiations.
Earlier on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Likud faction in the Knesset that he would encourage schools to partition the desks with plexiglass dividers in the fall, based on a recommendation by the National Security Council revealed earlier this month.
Netanyahu praised the partitions as a “good Israeli invention” which he said could join masks and social distancing as a means of preventing the spread of the coronavirus.
Although Israel has been using the dividers on public transportation and they have proven effective, the Jewish state is not the first to institute such a policy. The Netherlands and Taiwan, for example, have placed plastic shields around students’ desks in order to open their schools.
The infection rate in Israeli schools seems to be declining. As of Monday morning, there were 529 teachers and students infected with the novel virus, the Education Ministry reported. Some 26,669 teachers and students are in isolation and 193 schools are closed.
The largest school outbreak took place in Jerusalem’s Gymnasia Rehavia school, where dozens of students were infected with coronavirus at the end of last month.
One of those students was Avital Kushner, whose mother, Tania, caught the virus from her daughter. In an interview with the Hebrew website Ynet, Kushner described how Avital infected five family members, including her elderly grandmother, father and siblings.
Most of the family only had mild symptoms, but Tania became very ill and ended up in the hospital.
“I took care of everyone else, of course,” Tania told Ynet. “I was the last to be infected. I started getting a high fever. For three days I tried to deal with it at home. Then, I realized, you cannot handle it at home.”
When she arrived at the hospital she was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia and she had fluid in her lungs. Tania started to rapidly deteriorate and was given an oxygen tank. Doctors were considering intubation.
Somehow, the disease started to recede and now she is being treated in the regular coronavirus ward. She told Ynet that she has high sugar and is a little overweight, but at 44 she never imagined that she could become so sick from the virus.
“We don’t know how it could end,” she said. “So, take precaution, as they say.”
The number of cases of coronavirus in Israel rose by 114 in the last day, according to the Health Ministry. There have now been 19,122 people who have been infected.
In total, there are 3,520 active cases, including 35 in serious condition. Among them 25 who are ventilated. Two more people died in the last day, bringing the country’s death toll to 302.