Avraham Granwich, the principal of the Petach Tikva national-religious elementary school “LaMerchav” recently sent a letter to Petach Tikva Mayor Itzik Ohayon rejecting recent reports of racism in the school. The school was accused of apartheid in a report printed in Yediot Acharonot after the parents of four girls from Ethiopia complained that their daughters were separated from the rest of the girls in school. The report led to several similar articles in other papers, and to stormy protests in the local community of Ethiopian immigrants.
Many claims made in the initial report were completely false, Granwich said. In contrast with the claims made in Yediot Acharonot, the four girls in question had recess with the rest of their classmates, and took several classes together. The school accepted the girls as students out of a genuine desire to teach them, he said. The girls were put into a separate class in order to catch up with the rest of their classmates in certain subjects, such as reading and writing in Hebrew. While several articles claimed that the girls’ parents were not invited to parent-teacher conferences, Granwich said that no such conferences had been held so far this year.
Granwich told Ohayon that he had not spoken out against the mistaken reports because he felt that the media was uninterested in hearing the facts. The media frenzy had created the atmosphere of a lynch, he said, making any attempt to explain the issue unproductive.