Some 1.81 million pupils started the 5768 (2007-8) school year in Israel Sunday morning, with no immediate danger of a teachers' strike on the horizon.  The National Labor Court has forbidden the teachers from striking, at least until after another hearing this coming Thursday.  Some teachers held a protest vigil outside the Court Sunday.

The school week in Israel extends from Sunday until Friday. Friday is a half day.



The number of students beginning school today is up 1% over last year's total, which itself was 1% higher than the year before.  The number of nursery school children, 364,700, is 3.7% higher than last year, while the number of first-graders, 134,500, is virtually unchanged since last year.  Some 120,600 teachers in 3,919 schools will attempt to impart to them of their knowledge and values. 



Tens of thousands of yeshiva high school students and Talmud Torah pupils began their studies two weeks ago, at the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul.

Thousands of Magen David Adom and Civil Guard volunteers have descended upon the country's schools, disseminating information on road safety and helping police maintain order.

Kassams in Sderot

The school year in Sderot began with two Kassam rockets fired from Gaza.  They landed harmlessly outside the city- though causing the usual panic and crying in some classrooms - but gave city officials a taste of what the Gazan terrorists plan for the coming year.  Last night, as well, a rocket was fired; it landed near a school, but caused no damage.



Public Security Minister Avi Dichter was on hand in Sderot for the opening of the school year.  Wearing a blue school shirt, he talked with parents and students, assuring them that going to school was the right decision, despite the perceived dangers.  IDF Homefront Command representatives will accompany Sderot schoolchildren to and from school in the coming days.

One bewildered parent asked why Dichter's government doesn't simply order the IDF to go into Gaza to halt the Kassam rockets.  "Some people were talking about holding a mock funeral here," she told Arutz-7, "as if to tell the government, 'Is this what you're waiting for before you take action?'...  The situation is past normalcy; we barely don't know ourselves how we manage to stay here, hardly allowing our kids outside to play.  It's just impossible to grasp." 



Peres in Jerusalem, Olmert in Ramle

President Shimon Peres, after welcoming the Minister of Education and 150 soon-to-be first-graders in his official Jerusalem residence yesterday, visited two schools in southern Jerusalem today: The Tali school in Gilo - one of some 55 such schools throughout Israel in which enhanced Jewish studies are offered in a secular-school setting - and a new school in the Arab neighborhood of Tzur Baher.



The Achva Elementary School in Ramle hit the jackpot in terms of government visitors, hosting not only Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, but also Education Minister Yuli Tamir and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit.  "We will build 13 new schools in Sderot," Olmert promised.  "All the schools in Sderot, except for perhaps one section of a building, are fortified in accordance with the Home Front Command’s specifications."



Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni visited the Tzipori Public Religious School in Bat Yam, and told the students, "The school's task is not only to teach, but to impart values - as people and as Jews.  I would like to see more schools, not only the public religious ones, teaching Jewish and national values in an integrated form in a Jewish and democratic state."

Success in the Prisons

The school year has opened in Israel's prisons as well. Some 4,000 prisoners will take up their studies, learning either to read and write or otherwise completing their basic elementary or high school studies. In the Ofek Juvenile Prison, 250 students convicted of murder, rape or robbery will begin classes; the overwhelming majority of them never studied in school before. Of them, roughly 30 of the older students passed their matriculation exams last year. Orit Rabinovitch, head of the Prison Service's education department, said, "94% of those who completed their high school matriculation exams did not return to crime," proving the value of this program.



Studies did not begin today in isolated schools around the country, for reasons such as parental opposition to the bus company, demands for more school hours, crowdedness, and the like.