Petah Tikvah city hall won’t let Ethiopian kids transfer out of elementary school.

By Or Kashti.  Posted:  Tuesday, August 31, 2010 Dozens of parents of Ethiopian origin have been blocked by the Petah Tikva municipality from moving their children from the majority-Ethiopian religious Ner Etzion elementary school to other schools in the city. school – Nir Keidar – August 31 2010

Students at the Ner Etzion religious school in Petah Tikva on Sunday. Photo by: Nir Keidar

Most of the requests were based on the parents’ desire not to have their children studying in a school whose student population was nearly exclusively Ethiopian. The municipality, backed by the Education Ministry, rejected most of the requests, saying that it could not force the other religious schools, private and public, to accept a large group of Ethiopian students.

“The arrangement with the schools is based on the assumption that each religious school takes only a small group of Ethiopian students. Taking several dozen such children is out of the question,” a source with close knowledge of the Petah Tikva education system told Haaretz.

Of the 290 students expected to attend Ner Etzion this year, only one, first-grader Ran Keinan, is not of Ethiopian origin. The process by More >