About 500 students and parents from Beit Yaakov Gila held a quiet protest on Tuesday morning in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood against the city’s decision to keep the school divided across separate buildings. Families say the split forces girls to move between distant sites and has badly harmed daily school life.
For years, students had to travel each day to the Beit Vagan neighborhood. Although they were promised a permanent building in Gilo, the school was instead split, with younger grades moved to one building in Gilo and older grades left in Beit Vagan. Under the city’s plan for the next school year, the upper grades would move to another building inside Gilo, but one that is still separate from the younger grades’ site.
The parents’ committee says this is not just an administrative issue but a serious educational and financial problem. They warned that, “You cannot run an educational institution like this,” and said the split “tears families apart.” They also said there are nearby solutions already available that would allow the school to reunite under one roof, and argued that only “unreasonable political obstruction” is preventing them from being used.
Jerusalem Municipality said that, for the first time, all elementary school girls living in Gilo will study within the neighborhood and will no longer need to leave it. It said that this school year grades 1 through 3 study in Gilo, while grades 4 through 8 are in Beit Vagan. Starting next school year, all students will study in Gilo. The city said it has invested millions of shekels in new infrastructure and buildings, and that construction has already begun on a permanent school campus that will eventually house all the students together. The new temporary buildings will be used for the next two years, until the permanent structure is completed.
