Minister Gila Gamliel steps in to aid Israel’s 47 Arabic-speaking Christian schools that’s undergoing a severe financial crisis by formulating a program to fund private schools, including the Christian network, that meet certain requirements.
BY Israel Today Staff
Israeli Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel has decided to go to bat for the nation’s 47 Arabic-speaking Christian schools, which are facing a severe financial crisis.
The Christian schools went on strike last year demanding government funding, even though they are not part of the state-controlled public school system.
Israel’s Education Ministry agreed to provide the Christian schools a one-time 50 million shekel injection, but that funding is now three months overdue.
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Israeli officials are arguing that if the Christian schools want to receive taxpayer funding, they need to be folded into the official public school system.
But Gamliel says that regardless of their current status (the schools may still yet be recognized as official public schools) they deserve state funding.
A program Gamliel is quickly putting in place will allow any schools – including the Christian network – that meet certain requirements to apply for and receive grant money from the government.
View original Israel Today publication at:
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/29430/Default.aspx
Israel and Stuff Postscript:
What’s not mentioned in the article is how many of these 47 private Christian schools came to be. Just short of a decade ago, the Israeli Arabic-speaking Christian community, who were mostly co-existing in Muslim towns and villages, as well as a few Israeli cities, sought to divorce their education from the Muslim history and religious curriculum, that was the recognized standard in the non-Jewish syllabus.
Much more on this can be seen in these articles:
- Israeli Christians don’t want Arab & Muslim history in school curriculum
- ‘We are not Arabs. We are Arabic Speaking Christians’
- Christian Priest: ‘We Want to Defend Israel’
- Father Gabriel Nadaf: We’re Christians….Not Christian Arabs
Considering this phenomena, Israel and Stuff feels it behoves Israel to direct the Ministry of Education to accept Christian schools into the fold of automatic public funding, once basic and accepted curriculum is undertaken in their schools.