As the Health and Education Ministries battle over when and in what conditions to re-open the nation's schools, the cabinet decided on Friday to allow students in the first through third grades, along with 11th and 12th grades, to return to school on Sunday, May 3.
Special education will also resume on Sunday, as well as the sixth to eighth grades in Haredi schools.
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Daycare centers the nursery schools will reopen on Sunday, May 10, and fourth to 10th-grade students will return to school by June 1 at the latest, the ministers decided.
The Education Ministry and the Health Ministry faced off over the decision, with the former accusing the latter of making "new demands at the last minute, to prevent the reopening of schools as planned."
Reports Friday said that the National Security Council wanted to postpone the return to schools by a week.
The Education Ministry is recommending that the government re-open elementary schools, but keep nursery schools closed because it would be unrealistic to expect the latter to be able to comply with Health Ministry regulations to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
"Our recommendation is to re-open first through third grades. We've split every class into two groups of 15 children. They won't have to wear masks during lessons, and they will have to maintain social distancing and avoid gathering in groups. We need to start with the schools and wait with the nursery schools," a senior Health Ministry official said.
Elementary school students will have to wear masks at recess and in the school corridors.
The Health Ministry realized that its recommendations that nursery schools and daycare centers be opened with strict limitations in place – groups of up to 15 children, who will be divided into groups of seven to eight children, to be separated for mealtimes, play, and assigned different sinks and bathrooms – would be very difficult to implement, and therefore recommends that the Education Ministry wait for the next stage of the exit strategy before re-opening nursery schools.
"With very young children, the rate of infection could be much higher. The same thing for daycares: seven to eight children. We would prefer five, but that doesn't square with the reality," the official said.
Meanwhile, parents, teachers, and daycare workers are confused about the Education Ministry's decision. Parents of young children cannot return to work full time unless educational frameworks are in place, but there are still many unanswered questions about how daycare centers and schools plan to handle the coronavirus threat.
One educational official said that "The Education Ministry is doing good work, and I admire it a lot, but there are a lot of questions and issues that the ministry doesn't have answers for. This has been a time of uncertainty, but the Education Ministry rushes to put out plans that haven't really been approved. It creates expectations on the part of the parents, teachers, and students. Everyone becomes stressed, including the schools, because they don't know how things will be implemented and a lot of questions remain unsolved."
According to the official, schools are having difficulty bringing the teachers back to work, since many teachers have young children of their own who have no one to take care of their children.
"So they'll call the doctor, say that they have a cough, and ask for sick days, which they'll get, because no doctor wants to take a risk," the official said.
