Hanukkah without a Miracle: Many Cities Became Red or Orange During the Holiday • Meaning: 5th graders and up will stay home • "This Week - Critical for Education"
Hundreds of thousands of students will stay (again) at home.
Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Kfar Saba, Raanana and dozens of other cities are expected to change their color today (Wednesday) to red and orange.
This means that in these cities, from next Sunday, with the return to the educational institutions - fifth grades and up will be closed and students will return only to distance learning.
State Comptroller's Report: Defects in the Distance Learning System // Photo: From the State Comptroller and Ombudsman's YouTube channel
Middle schools in the red and orange cities will close after only one week of frontal learning and high school students who are supposed to attend winter matriculation have only been able to study for about two weeks, and in some places only two days a week.
The color of the cities is determined every Wednesday and reflects on the school week that begins on Sunday.
Some of the cities were already orange - but due to the Hanukkah holiday that began on Sunday, this was not reflected in the closure of educational institutions.
In the list of cities that are expected to turn red and orange or have already been: Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Kfar Saba, Raanana, Or Yehuda, Dimona, Kiryat Malachi, Sderot, Mevaseret Zion, Kiryat Yam, Nof Hagalil, Qalansawa, Abu Ghosh, Sakhnin and more.
While kindergarten and first to fourth graders are expected to resume learning this coming Sunday (December 20) even if they are studying in a red and orange city, fifth graders and above will not return to classroom learning if their city turns red or orange.
"We are really disappointed and worried about the situation," says Dror Cohen, the father of a fifth-grade student from Raanana.
"Since the beginning of the year he has been learning from home remotely. He only had two weeks to be in class, there was a sort of return to the Corona routine in capsules, but now it may stop and the routine is going to be ruined. School staff went above and beyond to teach them zoom, but it's just not the same level of "Learning, and since the other classes came back it just got worse. The boy and his classmates are already tired of the zoom, and they no longer want to connect in the days when they still studied remotely after rehearsal. Now again they are not going to school and we are already desperate."
Cohen is also the chairman of the parent leadership of Meged School, and he says the children are becoming more and more apathetic: “If at the beginning of the year my child was just waiting to go back to school, now, after so much time at home - he no longer cares.
The Ministry of Education is losing these students. "
"Stop complacency"
Eleanor Krichli, a 12th grade student from Kiryat Yam who is attending a comprehensive high school named after Yitzhak Rabin, is due to attend the matriculation exam in less than two months. She is also not expected to return to class, and she is afraid. "We have not been spoken to at school yet, but I understand that I Living in an orange city will have consequences - and we will probably not return to classes, "says Eleanor." For me it's dramatic, I look at the academic aspect just before matriculation and in a very difficult zoom I study subjects I approach for matriculation like chemistry, math and English.
School exams will not be easy either, which greatly increases my and my friends' stress.
The school has no way of measuring us, because we will not get to school and they will not be able to do protective tests for us - everything will be done through the zoom, which could pollute the purity of the exams.
It's absurd that you can meet in the afternoon, go to the mall but not come to study in a capsule in class. "
Given the soaring morbidity figures, the education system that is still on the Hanukkah holiday in the shadow of the corona will need a miracle so as not to close in on the third.
"This is a critical week for the education system and the entire country," says Prof. Hagai Levin, an epidemiologist at the Hebrew University and Hadassah and chairman of the Israel Public Health Physicians Association. "There is a danger of complacency following the arrival of vaccines and the opening of malls.
Feeling we have 'Run out of gas' emotionally.
People remove protections and masks and may become infected.
In addition, I am afraid that because of the holiday the small children as well as the adults will meet in careless gatherings and we will see this price immediately after Hanukkah.
"Then the price will be double, also a lot of morbidity among the children that will individually close kindergartens and schools that will have corona patients and also a general increase in morbidity that could lead to the closure of educational institutions."
