Due to Mayor Ehud Olmert's intervention, the problem of the
Tvunas Yaakov Bais Yaakov School in Ramot Alef of Jerusalem
has been solved. Despite promises from City Hall that it was
"making every effort to find a building for the classrooms,"
it took negotiations and demonstrations to procure a location
for the school. Finally, they were given space on the campus
of a school in Ramot.
School was to begin last Sunday. In spite of repeated letters
and pleas sent to the municipality's administration months
beforehand, the students had nowhere to go on their first day
of school. That day, in Safra Square, the tenth grade
students demonstrated against the Jerusalem Municipality,
which still hadn't found a suitable structure for the
school.
The neighborhood community center (Matnas, long a bitter foe
of the religious community) in Ramot illegally transferred a
group of senior citizens to the Naamat Center, which belongs
to the city. A different apartment had been rented for the
group on a nearby street. But when the community center got
word that the chareidi school would, indeed, receive the
structure designated for them, it transferred some of their
elderly participants to the Naamat building which was vacant
at the time, in defiance of the decision of the City
Council's Dwelling Committee.
Parents of the Tvunas Yaakov School students asked, "Why
doesn't the municipality evict the elderly people who invaded
the place without a permit, as it did to the Esrog School?
Why doesn't isn't it act as efficiently as it does when
chareidi institutions invade abandoned municipal buildings?
"
Municipality spokesman Chagai Elias, said, "Since the
activities of the Naamat building are municipal, they don't
require approval of the Dwelling Committee." This is not
actually true. Two months ago a request regarding similar
activities was filed with this committee, and it was rejected
by a majority of votes of the committee members.
Students were taken to demonstrations to try to acquire
learning facilities. Because of the heat in Safra Square at
the time of the demonstrations, Jerusalem's deputy mayors,
Rabbi Uri Lapolianski and Rabbi Uri Maklev, invited the girls
into their offices, where they held their classes on the
first day of school. They would have continued their studies
in those offices had no other solution been found.
Sunday afternoon, the mayor learned that the school had no
place and that the students were in City Hall. Due to
pressure exerted on him by the deputy mayors, he called an
urgent meeting with the director general of the municipality
and instructed him to solve the problem immediately.
That night, Rabbi Lapolianski and the director general of the
municipality, Raanan Dinor, visited the area in Ramot. They
considered the various proposals of the local community
center, and it became clear that they were all very costly.
The best solution seemed to be to situate the school in
trailers in the yard of the Yonatan Netanyahu School and in
the school's synagogue.
During the visit, the director general said that he was
astonished that the local community center was trying to
dictate to the municipality regarding the use of structures
owned by the city. Furthermore, he pointed out that there is
no need to allocate large sums of money, when there are empty
classrooms in the neighborhood.
Monday, the feverish deliberations between Rabbi Lapolianski,
Rabbi Maklev and the mayor continued, wherein the suggestion
was made to situate the students on the campus of the Yonatan
Netanyahu school. To prove that all of the students were
residents of the neighborhood, the deputy mayors transferred
a list of all of the students to the municipality.
Monday, after concluding the agreement with the mayor, the
members of the school's PTA thanked the administration of the
municipality, Rabbi Lapolianski and Rabbi Maklev, who had
remained staunch in their insistence on finding a suitable
solution to the serious problem of the 96 students of the
ninth and tenth grades.
Finally, on Tuesday morning, the Tvunas Yaakov students
commenced their studies in the trailers of the Yonatan
Netanyahu and in its synagogue.
