Yaffa Ben-David, chief of Israel's teachers' union, told the Knesset's Education, Culture, and Sports Committee Wednesday morning that the Health Ministry's directives for the new school year will be impossible to implement.
"The back-to-school plan released by the Education Ministry is very vague and all-encompassing. I'm worried about the public pressure on the Health Ministry, which changes its decisions all the time, and the ones who suffer from this are the teachers and the students."
"Many teachers and students were infected, and if you're going to claim that there aren't any infections, we'd like you to bring some proof."
"We want another person [in the classroom] to help in grades 1 and 2. In addition, we need to reduce the subjects taught, because during this period it is impossible to teach all of the subjects. To that end, give full autonomy to school administrators to decide what to teach and who will be added to reinforce the system. Don't impose programs on the administrators and tell them to follow them, that's not autonomy. The Health Ministry is giving clear directives, but they are impossible to implement, and then afterwards they say that educators aren't competent. How in God's name can you maintain a distance of six feet and ensure that the kids are wearing masks all day long?"