H EADLINES
reopening date. A patchwork
of policies and guidelines left
administrators scrambling.

Hundreds of teachers, students
and their relatives contracted
the virus quickly. In less than
two weeks, dozens of cities shut
down their school systems.

Still, with many Israeli
parents sick of home schooling
and supervising, clamoring
to send their children back to
school, Education Minister
Yoav Gallant insisted in July
that the next school year should
start on time on Sept. 1 —
and it did, despite widespread
objections from teachers.

Th at didn’t last long either.

Almost immediately, outbreaks
were associated with schools,
and classes, grades and even
entire schools were sent into
quarantine. Even as students
were lumped into “capsules”
to limit exposure to each
other, teachers moved between
capsules, potentially spreading
disease between them. (Th e
country had too few teachers to
reduce class sizes and had tried
to mount a rapid hiring eff ort.)
Th e situation became so acute
that schools ended up closing
before the general lockdown on
Rosh Hashanah.

Th e emphasis on getting
students back to school meant
that little attention had been
given to what would happen
if they needed to learn from
home again.

“I believe that we made a
mistake and missed an oppor-
tunity to develop the distance
learning components,” said
Zimra Vigoda, a parent whose
daughter’s school switched
to virtual learning earlier in
September when there were
too few unexposed teachers to
operate in person.

“The administration and
teachers worked hard to develop
the pod-based learning and added
a multitude of interesting courses
but, here in Israel, the land of
apparent perpetual optimism,
nobody, including myself, really
wanted to believe that in-person
learning would not be possible
this year,” Vigoda said.

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