About 150 veteran kindergarten teachers in the Agudat Yisrael preschool network have appealed to Haredi lawmakers, warning that a bureaucratic and budgetary failure could force dozens of kindergartens to close and put about 150 households at risk. The letter was sent on Friday, as the dispute over their pay and employment conditions intensified.
The teachers say the Education Ministry’s funding mechanism is broken and unfairly penalizes senior staff. In their words, “the more skilled, senior and educated we are, the more money the network loses on us,” creating an “cruel and terrible” system that turns experience and seniority into a reason for dismissal. They argue that the network, which has served the Haredi community for decades, is being pushed to fire them only because it cannot absorb the cost created by the current budgeting rules.
According to the article, the Agudat Yisrael kindergarten network, which educates tens of thousands of children and relies heavily on state funds, says it lacks the money to keep many of the veteran teachers and would therefore need to shut down dozens of kindergartens. The teachers say the problem is not local to Modiin Illit, where many of those affected work, but a systemic failure that could spread to other networks across the country.
The letter sets out three demands: full funding based on each teacher’s true seniority, education and pay grade; immediate completion of the “Ofek Hadash” framework for kindergartens, with implementation in the 5787 school year; and an immediate freeze on the layoffs through a temporary budget guarantee. The teachers also note that recent High Court interim orders against funding transfers to Haredi institutions and the reported censorship of a Finance Ministry document opposing a pay raise for Haredi kindergarten teachers have deepened the crisis. They are now waiting to see whether Haredi MKs can intervene quickly.
