The Teachers’ Union has demanded the Education Ministry cut the number of mainstreamed special education children, threatening that if the integration rates do not drop, there will be a system-wide strike, Shavvim reported.
Teachers' Union Secretary General Yaffa Ben David sent a letter to the Education Ministry Director General, claiming that the Ministry promised to uphold a law limiting the number of special needs students with IEPs integrated into regular classes to two students per classroom.
The letter, published on the Shavvim website, warned that if the demand is not met, the organization will take organizational action up to shutting down the education system. According to the Ministry of Education, the current number of integrated students stands at 234,000. The Teachers’ Union claimed that sometimes seven or more special education students are placed in a regular classroom, noting that remedial classes have a limit of seven students.
Under Israeli law, once a child is approved for special education services, the parents can choose to mainstream the child with integrated supports, place the child in a special class in a regular school, or send the child to a special education school.
In Ben David's letter, she claimed that an absurd situation has been created: In a regular classroom with about thirty general education students, special education students are also integrated, forcing teachers who may not be trained in special education to manage both a regular class and a special education class simultaneously.
"It is utterly unreasonable, creating an unbearable burden on the educational staff and effectively preventing learning both for students with individual learning plans and the other students," she claimed.
Concluding her letter, Ben David warned that if the Ministry does not take steps to reduce the number of special needs students per regular classroom, the Teachers' Union will "take legal and organizational action, including declaring a labor dispute, with everything that entails."