Girls school in Emmanuel approved

School will not be state-funded and will follow strict guidelines.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
haredi girls 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
haredi girls 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
The Education Ministry officially announced Wednesday that it will approve the opening of a private education institution in the Emanuel settlement but it will not be funded by the state.
Specific guidelines for the establishment of a school were detailed to the Supreme Court, stressing that discrimination will not be tolerated.
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Certain considerations were taken into account including the fact that the settlement is relatively isolated and children traveling outside of the settlement could pose security risks.
As part of the announcement, the Education Ministry said that it had taken into consideration a request made by parents of the students. In conjunction with the request, girls in the community will have the opportunity to be educated within a community framework that is religious and hasidic.
Initially the education ministry refused to approve the requests but after all the criminal procedures that surrounded the girls school and including the arrest of many of the parents it was decided to accede the requests.
The announcement comes after a long affair involving girls education in the settlement.
A school was established following a High Court ruling in 2009, which ordered the Education Ministry, the Emmanuel local council and the Independent Education Center to stop operating two separate schools in the same building: one for Sephardim, and one – the “hassidic stream” – for Ashkenazim and for Sephardim prepared to conduct themselves according to Ashkenazi-haredi custom.
The affair heated up earlier this year when 22 mothers and 35 fathers were jailed for refusing to return their daughters to the school once the walls dividing the “hassidic track” from the rest of the school were removed at the court’s order.
The court ruled that the segregation within the school was illegal, as it was ethnically motivated, evident in the fact that it divided between Sephardi girls and the Ashkenazi ones from Slonim hassidic families.