Government zigzags on formulas for reopening of schools

Coronavirus cabinet to debate proposals • Katz, Edelstein battle over retail return

The coronavirus cabinet meeting is likely to be long and tense on Thursday, as ministers attempt to finalize decisions about what will open on Sunday and how.

After the cabinet made a decision earlier this week to open grades one and two in capsules of up to 18 students, three days per week, with after- school programs pulling together students from as many as three classes, it looks like this decision could be turned upside- down.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now considering allowing classes to resume in full but requiring that there be no mixing in the after- school programs.

At the same time, Education Minister Yoav Gallant rolled out his own plan on Wednesday, in which children in grades one and two would be able to attend class at least four days per week but still in capsules.

The change, according to Gallant, was made possible by reducing the number of days that third and fourth graders will learn in their classrooms from five to four. It is not yet clear if there would be distance learning on the days the children are not in school.

Municipalities that can offer five days in school would be able to do so.

“The plan is to return elementary school students to five days of schooling,” Gallant said.

He said that the damage to students who have not been in school is on multiple fronts – educational and psychological. “I believe in our principals and teachers, who, together with the heads of authorities, will run the educational institutions in the best way possible.”

The shift in strategy for both Netanyahu and the education minister was likely a result of pressure by the local authorities, parents and teachers, and came after heavy criticism on Wednesday from members of the Knesset Education Committee, especially its chairman, Ram Shefa.

At Wednesday’s committee meeting, the members also rejected the outline for allowing students to gather in open spaces, which was approved by the coronavirus cabinet earlier in the week.

The Health and Education ministries had agreed to allow up to 15 students to gather outdoors for any educational or social activity run by their schools. The groups were expected to stay 100 meters apart. The committee said the cabinet should increase the number of students to 20 and decrease the distance between students to 50 meters.

“No professional body was able to explain the limitation of 15 students,” Shefa charged.

In an interview Wednesday morning with KAN News, Dr. Gili Regev- Yochay, director of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Unit from Sheba Medical Center, said that “it is clear” that schools need to reopen, because of the damage it is causing to the country’s children. However, she warned, “if we do it too fast, we will see an increase [ in infection]. We must do it carefully.”

The numbers, however, are looking better than expected, according to outgoing coronavirus commissioner Prof. Ronni Gamzu.

He said during his weekly briefing Wednesday that the country has surpassed the goal it set for itself of 1,000 new cases per day and that the government had the “green light” to move forward with the next phase of its exit strategy, which is expected to begin on Sunday.

There were 856 new cases diagnosed in the last day out of

his record of the Iran deal and especially Resolution 2334 in December of 2016. He can say he’s for the Jews, for Israel – but he really isn’t.”

Fiske said that the message of Republicans in Florida to the Jewish community is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “will jump back into the Iran deal.”

“The rial has lost 60% of its value in 2020 alone, and around 80% since President Trump has been elected. They are on their knees,” he said. “And if Biden wins, they will receive an influx of cash and we are back to the same place we were when President Trump started. Everything will be reversed.”

One additional factor that could shape the race is COVID19. Fiske said that as a Trump supporter, he feels that the president has done more than any world leader has done. “However, if he loses, I feel he loses because of coronavirus,” he said.

Evan Ross is a Jewish campaign consultant and activist who supports Joe Biden. “Everybody I talk to, whether they’re a Democrat or Republican or neither, is just very much looking forward to this election being over. Nobody is really enjoying the process,” he said.

“Everybody is just tired of the ugliness of the campaigning, the stress of it, the constant barrage of news that is about nothing but the election. And people are just ready for it to be over,” he continued.

Ross said he wishes he could turn on his TV without hearing anything about politics for an hour.

He noted that Florida is a state that comes down to very small margins in every election. “If you look at our history, nobody wins Florida by big numbers. Everybody who wins Florida wins it close.”

Like Fiske, Ross also predicted that Trump would get a larger share of the Jewish vote than he got in 2016, both nationally and in Florida. “I think there are a lot of Jewish voters who are very happy with his Israel policy. And because of it, they will ignore some of the things that they don’t like about him and cast a vote for him.

“So I expect that [ instead of] the 27% he got in 2016, he’ll be more in the range of 30% this year. Is it enough that it changes the outcome? We’ll see. Florida is going to be close, so you take nothing for granted.”

He noted that he supports the president’s decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem and that the three recent normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries “are fantastic.”

“However, nothing could be worse for Israel and its relationship with the US – and its reliance on the US – than to have support for Israel become a partisan issue in the US. So Joe Biden has spent 47 years in public office and has a track record of being pro- Israel,” Ross said.

“He won’t use Israel as a political football. He won’t say, ‘ I did something good for Israel, so you should only vote for Democrats if you care about Israel,’ where Trump does that consistently – not just with Israel, [ but] with lots of issues. And what he does by propelling that message is he creates a divide. And that doesn’t benefit Israel – it hurts Israel.” •