The Jerusalem Municipality contacted principals and directors
of chareidi educational institutions in the city and
instructed them to secure funding for employees' salaries by
filing requests with the Municipal Support Payments
Committee. The municipality says that despite the Justice
Ministry's directive, employees at chareidi educational
institutions will be able to remain at their posts and be
paid.
Recently legal rulings issued by Atty. Amnon de Hartoch of
the Justice Ministry went into effect, forcing local
authorities to dismiss all workers at chareidi educational
institutions employed as municipal workers. The rulings had
their greatest impact in Jerusalem, the city with the largest
chareidi education system in the country, but advance
preparation has allowed the municipality to continue funding
the employees' salaries.
In order to effect a comprehensive solution to the Justice
Ministry decrees, Mayor Rabbi Uri Lupoliansky has conducted
marathon meetings over the past several months with legal
experts at the municipality and elsewhere, which led to the
initiative to formulate new criteria for the support
regulations for education. These criteria allow the
municipality to continue funding the employees in the
chareidi schools by transferring funds directly to the
educational networks, thereby allowing the municipality to
continue full support for the maintenance of the
institutions.
Representatives of the municipality's Department for Chareidi
Education notified principals and directors that the
municipality has budgeted special funds to cover the cost of
paying the 170 office workers and janitors who are involved.
The department heads explained to the principals and school
network heads how to submit requests to the support funding
committee, asking them to do so immediately in order to
accelerate the transfer of funds. The director of the
Department for Chareidi Education at the Jerusalem
Municipality, Rabbi Itamar Bar-Ezer, said that although the
municipality would continue to transfer to the school
networks the cost of paying workers' salaries, because in the
future the employers will be the institutions themselves
rather than the city as has been the case up until now, the
municipality worked uncompromisingly to ensure that the
employees receive the same benefits as they had been
receiving previously.
Rabbi Bar-Ezer also said that according to new municipality
regulations special education workers would also continue to
have their salaries covered by the municipality, which would
transfer additional funding special-ed classes have not
received previously, by paying the external study fees non-
municipal institutions are eligible for.
The recently approved Knesset law requiring local authorities
to pay for 75 percent of operating expenses at "recognized
but unofficial" institutions should have circumvented de
Hartoch's rulings, but the Education Ministry has been slow
to formulate regulations to implement the law. Recently MK
Rabbi Moshe Gafni urged Education Minister Yuli Tamir to
consult with representatives of recognized institutions
during the talks over finalizing the regulations. "Holding
meetings on all of these issues without consulting and
cooperating with representatives [from the chareidi education
system] is liable to be interpreted as tendentious and
unprofessional," Rabbi Gafni wrote in a recent letter to
Minister Tamir.
Deputy Mayor Rabbi Uri Maklev, who holds the chareidi
education portfolio, said that when the law takes effect and
is implemented at the local authorities, it would primarily
help educational institutions in local authorities that lack
strong chareidi representation. "The Jerusalem Municipality
is not waiting until the final directives are complete.
Jerusalem is among the only authorities that budget chareidi
educational networks 100 percent, rather than 75 percent as
the law requires, and will continue to do so despite the
Justice Ministry directive, by using the new support
regulation," said Rabbi Maklev. But when the Nahari Law goes
into effect, noted Rabbi Maklev, it will still have
ramifications for educational institutions in Jerusalem, for
it will allow the municipality to fund school maintenance
directly rather than using this new indirect mechanism.
