| stopthewall.org | | In East Jerusalem, 23 students study in a single bedroom Welcome to the Shuafat Girls Elementary School No. 2. The building may be misleading: it is a residential building next to an empty, muddy field in the Shuafat neighborhood, on the northeastern edge of Jerusalem. The voices of girls reciting verses from a textbook echo from one of the rooms. |
Three hundred and forty girls study here, in 10 classrooms. Almost all of them are from the Shuafat refugee camp just outside Jerusalem. Seventeen teachers supervise them. The principal's room is crowded with two desks, a copying machine and the school's only computer on the secretary's desk.
One classroom used to be a bedroom, says the principal, Maisun Halak. It is a four meter by four meter room in which 23 girls sit and study. There is no room for their bags, which are placed on the windowsill. The narrow entrance only allows one person to pass at at time. What would happen in an emergency? The room on the other side of the hall is more welcoming. The green desks were designed with the help of a contribution from the Peres Center for Peace; the principal enlisted an architect to maximize the use of space. The budget was only enough for one classroom. Thirty-four students learn in the kitchen. The girls leave their bags on the marble kitchen counters and in the kitchen cabinets. In the living room, 40 girls are having a math lesson. Here, too, the crowding is incomprehensible. Some of the girls have to sit next to the blackboard and cannot see very well what is written on it. Forty-four girls learn in the biggest classroom. All of them wear sweaters, coats and scarves. There is no money for heating. The State of Israel is responsible for schools in East Jerusalem since it annexed the eastern part of the city and granted permanent resident status to all Arab residents there after the Six-Day War. Today, tens of thousands of children are subject to the Israel's compulsory education law, but are discriminated against when it comes to allocating budgets for infrastructure and developing educational institutions. The years of neglect have turned the education system in East Jerusalem into the worst in the country: Dropout rates are the highest and the schools have the lowest percentage of students taking matriculation exams. In Israel in 2005, the ultra-Orthodox style "heder" (one-room school) system imported from the Diaspora is actually experiencing a revival in the education network in East Jerusalem. The city says the eastern part of the city is missing 1,354 standard rooms and to resolve the problem, several creative solutions were necessary, mainly to rent residential buildings and transform them into schools. The Jerusalem Municipality Comptroller's Report for 2003-2004 devoted a section to the issue of education in East Jerusalem. Among other things, it stated, "in East Jerusalem there is a large shortage of classrooms. The master plan for educational institutions in eastern Jerusalem published in early 2003 indicated that the student population in the Arab sector in Jerusalem in municipal schools grew over the last decade at a rate of some 7 percent annually. In order to overcome the severe shortage of space, the municipality has over the years rented space from private entities and used the buildings as schools. According to the master plan, around 40 percent of the classrooms in the eastern part of the city do not meet the standard and are in rented buildings that were not designed as educational institutions and they need to be adapted. In the year 5763 (2002-2003) school year, the number of rented classrooms in use in the education network reached around 400. The situation in all the rented facilities that the comptroller's office visited was particularly difficult." According to current data from the Jerusalem city educational administration relayed, there are 108 buildings being used as schools in the eastern part of the city, 46 of them up to standard and 62 that are not up to standard. Social differences In the morning, the sidewalks of the northern neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina, which are seen as a single geographic unit, fill with thousands of schoolchildren in school uniforms. Eight official schools operating there absorb these children as well as children from the Shuafat refugee camp and the neighborhoods of Anata, Dahat al-Salaam and Ras Hamis. These neighborhoods of northeastern Jerusalem have a total population of over 80,000 residents. Their children learn in six elementary schools in Beit Hanina and Shuafat and two boys' high schools, one new and spacious one in Beit Hanina and another in Shuafat. Except for the new high school, the other schools all are housed in rented buildings that were refitted for use as classrooms. The Beit Hanina girls' elementary school is housed in four separate residential buildings. The Shuafat boys' elementary school No. 2 is housed in two residential buildings. All the buildings are far from each other. Even if the children who study there finish elementary school, they are not assured of a spot in the higher grades. The girls' situation is particularly difficult, as there is only one junior high school serving them, and not a single official high school. Over the years, clear social differences have been created. Many of the residents of Beit Hanina and Shuafat are middle-class and make sure to find alternative education options for their children. They will attend private schools and their parents will pay $1,000 to $3,000 a year per child. The less fortunate residents of the refugee camp and the other neighborhoods will have to make do with the municipality and the Ministry of Education's network. According to unofficial estimates, over 80 percent of the children in these public schools come from outside Beit Hanina and Shuafat. Two bodies are responsible for elementary school education in the eastern part of the city. The Ministry of Education is responsible for paying teachers and principals' salaries, and the Jerusalem Municipality's education administration is responsible for building maintenance and ongoing expenses. Maisun Halak, the principal of Shuafat girls' school No. 2, relates that the Jerusalem education administration allocates NIS 24,000 a year to it for current expenses. That sum is meant to cover the costs of running the school. There are no labs and no computers. There are no art classes. Until last year, the municipality provided hot meals, she says, but this year Halak had to drop them, as there is no room to eat them and setting up to do so wastes precious study time. Even so there are not enough teaching hours available. A Ministry of Education supervisor comes occasionally to the school, but he is very restricted. His job defintion is accompaniment, monitoring and guidance for principals and teachers; the rest is outside his area of responsibility. Halak contacted the municipality to obtain approval for construction of two additional classrooms on the roof. The request was turned down, because the building is rented and belongs to a private individual. How was the school's budget determined? Who is responsible for ensuring that the students do indeed receive the little they are entitled to? A paragraph in the municipal comptroller's 2003-2004 report provides a rare glimpse into the workings of the education administration and shows that no one oversees the public funds injected into education in the eastern part of the city: "as a result of the lack of effective financial oversight by the education administration of educational institutions in the eastern part of the city, financial management norms and practices that do not correspond with the rules of proper administration have become entrenched in recent years. The education administration reported an improvement in the situation of late, as a result of guidance and oversight. Until 5764 (2003-2004), there were not set uniform fees for school services, nor were there rules for granting discounts. The review found that the education administration has no data on sums educational institutions collected from parents, on the collection rates and on the types of discounts given. The education administration in late 2002 distributed to all school principals rules and regulations in writing regarding accounting and record keeping in the schools. In 5763, audits were conducted in only 12 of 44 schools. Each of the schools audited were found to have shortcomings." Parents pay Transportation to the schools is paid for by the parents. The government decision of July 2005 stipulating that children beyond the separation fence are entitled to transportation from the roadblock to school apparently never reached here. The separation fence around the Shuafat refugee camp was built in March, but the transportation the government committed itself to never materialized. Some of the parents don't have the money to pay for transportation and their kids walk. The only way the children can get out is via the roadblock at the entrance to the camp. On the way, they will also have to cross a main road, which separates the refugee camp from the neighborhood. The Ministry of Education's criteria are not determined on the basis of the families' economic situation or the obstacles the children will have to circumvent on their way to school, only on the basis of distance. There is no mention even of psychological counseling and guidance services for the children. Here they learn to absorb everything and hold it in. The Jerusalem Municipality said in response that the heating costs are included in the current expenses budget that was transferred to the school. The municipality was not aware of a school with no heating in winter. In the regular education network, the criteria for eligibility for school buses are determined by the Ministry of Education. Eligibility is determined for the student and not for the school and if there is a school whose students live close by, they will not get transportation. Education in eastern Jerusalem does not have a separate budget; rather it is part of the overall education administration budget and therefore preparing a separate report on the budget for the eastern part of the city requires time. The Ministry of Education said in response that "so far the construction of the separation fence in northern Jerusalem has yet to be completed and children still do not have a problem crossing it. When construction is complete, no problem is expected because all of the requests made by the Jerusalem municipality education administration, which is responsible for school transportation in eastern Jerusalem, have been approved by the Ministry of Education in principle. According to the arrangement with the Jerusalem municipality education administration, the problem will be resolved in coordination with the Israel Defense Forces in two ways: either the students will be taken to the crossing points in the fence, cross over and get on buses that will take them to school, or they will be eligible for fast crossing and pass through quickly in the same vehicle that brought them there."
Rima Isa, a journalist and documentary film director, assisted in reporting this article.
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