The teachers’ union and the Ministry of Finance sat at the negotiating table again today (Wednesday), but it seems that no significant progress has been made. The school year is supposed to start in just eight days, but parents and students currently have no good reasons for optimism. As of now, it seems that the school year will not open as a series.
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The chairman of the teachers’ organization, Ran Erez, also announced this morning that if a collective agreement is not signed by the start of the school year, his organization will join the teachers’ union strike. However, he added that in his opinion they will not have to strike because eventually an agreement will be signed. He said this at the education conference of The Marker newspaper in Kiryat Ono. The Minister of Education, Yifat Shasha-Biton, was also present at the conference and criticized the Treasury’s proposal for teachers. “You are captive to the magic number of NIS 9,000. It sounds nice, but it’s just a smoke screen for a whole program, in which there is no horizon for the teachers entering the system.”
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The main points of the dispute between the teachers union and the Treasury concern the salary of veteran and novice teachers, as well as the transition to five school days, supplements for additional positions and grants for outstanding teachers. The issue of the veteran teachers led to a bitter fight in the government – Lapid said he did not like the way in which the veteran teachers were being talked about in the negotiations, a statement that Liberman happened to, along with other statements “an attempt to impose a political decision on the professional level”.