A Rainbow ("Keshet") of Optimism

"Keshet," the democratic, social and environmental school located in Zichron Yaacov, was opened in 2002, as a result of a sustained and dedicated effort by a group of parents. They describe the establishment of the school as a "determined stand against internal doubts as well as pressures from without which threatened to crush the young sapling even before it sunk its roots in the ground." Despite the hardships, they say, "the young plant is now firmly rooted and has blossomed into a tree with many branches. As long as the tree grew well, the world around us also came to relax and to become friendlier to us. The Spring has become longer and the other seasons have become shorter," they say there.

But the optimism of the school's staff may be misleading. One of the major challenges facing the school was and remains the actual locating of the school in Zichron Yaacov." Yes, the Democratic School in Zichron Yaacov was never allocated a building in Zichron Yaacov, and after establishing a temporary residence at Kibbutz Maagan Michael for four years, the school, contrarily enough, operated in Or Aqiva this year. The school has been hearing promises from the Zichron Yaacov Regional Council to provide support as well as an appropriate building in which the school could operate for more than four years.

The School's Uniqueness

What is special about the Keshet School? The members of the school staff contend that it is hard to choose the most significant element that makes the school special. Perhaps the most important, they say, is the willingness to walk the fine line that leads between areas of uncertainty." "The ultimate truth for us," they say, "is that we are a community that believes in many truths that want to exist together." Religious and secular students study in our school and they live a common existence together, in contrast to what happens in the wider society in Israel outside of the school The parents and families of our students believe in following many educational approaches, and through friendly dialogue we have succeeded in establishing the guidelines together for our educational path, for the approaches that guide the views of us all. "We are enriched by the diversity and differences, and we believe that a worthy society emphasizes the uniqueness of each one and doesn't seek uniformity."

In its fifth year, the school operates from a building that was built with financing from the National Lottery in the "Green Lights" neighborhood of Or Aqiva. The building was never occupied because the neighborhood did not have enough children to fill the school. To reach it, the students travel on Highway 4 to Bernichky Junction (at the "Jasmin" Coffee House) and then turn west. The students come from Zichron Yaacov and from other communities nearby by means of organized transportation paid for by the parents. In September 2002, the school year began with seventy-three students, and in 2006, there were two hundred-and-ten students from kindergarten through Ninth Grade. Every year, the school will add another grade until it offers classes from kindergarten age through Twelfth Grade. The school contains classrooms and classroom teachers and from Third Grade on, every student also has a personal educator drawn from among the school's staff.

The school functions in a democratic way, and the general assembly, called "The Keshet Knesset," is the body that makes the laws that govern the school. The school Committee is the executive body that carries out the laws, and the teaching staff is also an executive body that carries out the school's laws. It is subordinate to the Knesset, although it has autonomy in educational matters. Conflicts in the school between individuals are resolved through mediation or democratic arbitration. The school's constitution provides a legal basis for this entire structure of conflict resolution. The essence, the school believes, is a system of friendly relations between the adults and the younger people at the school. This intimate and empathetic dialogue between the adults and the students creates an atmosphere of trust which enables everyone to live a good and secure life. The students there believe that this trust is the basis of the community's life at the school, and also that it opens everyone's hearts to choice and to genuine learning. They believe it does this by reducing the level of conflict in daily life.

The educational curriculum is rich and varied. At the Keshet School, it was decided to emphasize the disciplines of Judaism, the Arts (including the Plastic Arts, Theatre and Music) as well as basic educational skills. The fields of Hebrew, Mathematics and English are mandatory subjects for every student. The range of subjects from which every student may choose his or her major is so wide it almost seems as if this was a university. In the Arts and Artistic Disciplines, there are twenty-six courses available, such as: sculpture, carpentry, Doll Theater, sketching, drawing and many more. In the field of physical education, the students find nineteen different courses including Tai Kwondo, soccer, floor gymnastics and general physical fitness. In the field of Judaism, there are twenty-two courses offered including Jewish music, Midrash, Gemara, Leadership in the Bible, and many others. In the field of the Natural and Life Sciences, there are sixteen courses available, including the Human Body, Energy and Materials, Electricity and Magnetism. And in the field of History, there are courses offered in From the Holocaust to Revival, Democracy and Dictatorships, and many others. In the field of Computers, there are courses offered in Building Internet sites and a wide variety of programming courses. In addition, there are also courses available in the field of the Arabic Language, Theatre, Cinema, Life Skills, Geography and many, many more. In the coming years the school plans to expand and to emphasize additional fields of study, in accordance with the decisions of the community. However, they are committed to not changing the fundamental principle: "a significant part of our educational resources at the Keshet School will continue to be devoted to the emotional and social lives of our students, and to teaching them values," they emphasize.

The Association's Struggle

The Keshet School is administered by "The Association for the Democratic School in Zichron Yaacov." The initial core group of Association members was a group of parents from Zichron Yaacov, some of whom even left their places of employment and devoted almost two years to the establishment of the school, before it opened its doors.

Inbar Avital, a resident of the Neve HaBaron neighborhood of Zichron Yaacov, was the person who initiated the whole project of establishing an alternative school for the residents of Zichron Yaacov. She tells us that the idea grew out of a number of spontaneous conversations among the parents of the kindergarten which her son attended, most of whom were then new residents of Zichron Yaacov. The ideas that they raised underwent a number of different incarnations by the time the school had opened.

Avital, who is active in the fields of education and organizational consulting, and who is currently studying at the Mandel Institute for Educational Leadership, naturally became the central player in the process of establishing the school, even though her son was then too young for school. The small group of parents began to meet in the evenings at their homes, with the objective of advancing the idea of the school. Very quickly, Inbar Avital connected with the actor Moshe Ivgi and with Moshe ("Moishik") Lerner, who is also a graduate of the Mandel Institute, and who was acting independently to establish a Democratic school in Zichron Yaacov. Ivgi, a resident of the Horesh Villas neighborhood of Zichron Yaacov, has two older children who were studying at the time at the Democratic school in Hadera, which is similar to the framework in which his younger daughter studies today (in Fifth Grade at the Keshet School). Ivgi became the living embodiment of the efforts to establish a Democratic school in Moshava, together with Moishik Lerner. Lerner, who is a fifth generation resident of Zichron Yaacov, was at the time, a member of the Zichron Yaacov Regional Council and Chairman of its Education Committee between the years 1998-93. He had originally joined the Committee as both a parent and a youth counselor. He assisted the parents in establishing working teams and with everything involved in the formal stages of establishing a Democratic school. Inbar Avital managed the Association during the course of three years, during which she also was the Principal of the school for two years, before returning to her studies. She continues to be active in the school as a parent and as a member of the school's Ethics Committee. Lerner is the current Principal of the school.

The peaceful atmosphere which the children enjoy at the school does not really hide the struggles that the Association has been forced to carry out with the authorities since it was established. In 2003, the year the school opened, The Association waged long legal battles with the Ministry of Education, on behalf of the Democratic School. On the one hand, it was successful in obtaining an injunction from the court to stop the Education Ministry's order to close the school. On the other hand, it was unsuccessful in its appeals, first to the Ministry of Education, and then, to the Court for Administrative Matters. Despite denying the Association's appeal, the Appeals Committee did order that the school would not be closed during the 2002-03 school year and that it could return and present a properly drafted application for a license to operate a school for the 2004 school year. Before the 2004 school year, the Association presented all of the required documents that had been specified, but the its request for a license to operate as a school was turned down for various reasons, and the Association again presented an appeal to the decision. The decision of the Appeals Committee in 2004 addressed every one of the points that the Ministry of Education had used as explanations for its refusal to grant the license, and it rejected every single one of them. The members of the Association have no doubt that one of the factors that tipped the scales in the direction of the Association was the appearance of the newly elected Head of the Regional Council, Eli Aboutbul, before the Committee. The fresh new Head of the Regional Council stated that he saw the Democratic School as belonging to the community, saying that he intended to act to transfer it to Zichron Yaacov. Despite the statements, the school remained outside of the community, in buildings that had served the Hof Carmel Field School, located right beside Kibbutz Maagan Michael.

Finding a Permanent Location

Before the current school year began, a disagreement emerged between the Israel Lands Authority and the Society for the Protection of Nature surrounding the operation of the Maagan Michael Field School. As a result, the Keshet School was forced to find another, alternative temporary shelter, this one located in Or Aqiva. However, it appears that their presence as guests there will not be able to continue for long, and the school will be forced to wander again to a temporary lodging outside of Zichron Yaacov. That is, unless the Regional Council finds them a suitable location, even if again, only temporarily. The architect Anat Atzmon, a resident of Zichron Yaacov and the mother of twins who are students in the Fifth Grade at the school, and who have studied there since it opened, said that the fact that the school is located outside of the community bothers her very much, and that, "it would be a genuine relief for the parents if the Regional Council would find a location for the school within the community." In addition, as someone who was involved in the establishment of the school, it bothers her that, "there has been a failure to place appropriate resources at the school's disposal by the Ministry of Education and the Regional Council, because the vision of the school was to be a community school at which every child that wanted to learn there would be able to, without consideration of the ability of his or her parents to afford the cost."

Since 2004, the Keshet School has operated with the status of "a recognized but not official" school in the eyes of the Ministry of Education. The annual tuition at the school is high, reaching approximately NIS 1,200 per month per student, due primarily to the school's status as "not official," and the low subsidy the school receives from the Ministry of Education as a result. A related factor is that since the Zichron Yaacov Regional Council has not made a building available to the school, the parents of the students of the school have had to pay for the cost of renting a school building as well as for the transportation to and from the school. This has created a sort of absurd situation in which, as citizens of Israel and residents of Zichron Yaacov and the surrounding communities from which the school's students come, they pay the same taxes as do every other citizen of Israel and resident of Zichron Yaacov, taxes which among other things, are intended to pay for the provision of classrooms in which their children can study. Resolving the status of the school as an officially recognized school and providing it with a permanent building are in fact high on the list of priorities of the Association's members. Shirit Kroshnivsky, the Head of the Association, says that in the last month, the Association met with a series of public figures including Rabbi Avi Gisser, Chairman of the National Religious Educational Association, Knesset member Michael Melchior, the Chairman of the Knesset Committee on Education, Culture and Sport, and the personal assistants of the Director General of the Ministry of Education, Shmuel Aboav. "Everyone expressed support for resolving the issue of the status of the school as Official or National Religious," she noted. "Moreover, if a place can be found for us here, the residents of Zichron Yaacov will be able to enjoy, in their community, a school which educational experts and public figures see as a model to duplicate for schools throughout the country." "Our existence is not for selfish reasons. We clearly see what we are doing as being in and for the public interest, something which the entire community of residents of Zichron Yaacov can enjoy. The Keshet School can provide an answer to many students from Zichron Yaacov that do not receive it in the conventional schools." She adds, "the Head of the Regional Council, Eli Aboutbul, has been with us throughout this long journey, and if he had any objection to our being located in Zichron Yaacov, he could have expressed it many years ago."

Regional Council Head Aboutbul has expressed public support for granting the school official recognition and a month ago, he even worked together with the school's leadership against the Ministry of Education, to make progress toward obtaining this status. The Regional Council even has its own reasons to have the school located in Zichron Yaacov. This is because the Ministry of Education deducts from the Regional Council's education budget the amount of the student subsidy for each student that studies outside of the area of the Regional Council. It is precisely because of this factor that Haim Gaash, the Head of the Pardes Hannah-Karkur Regional Council is working to establish a Democratic school in the buildings of the "Alonim" school in his community.

Especially irritating to a number of the members of the Keshet School Association, who are residents of Zichron Yaacov, is the fact that the new school that was built beside the "Zichron Dreams" neighborhood, is standing empty this year, and will, apparently, continue to stand empty also during the coming school year. The Head of the regional Council, for his part, contends to the Association, that the preparation of the infrastructure of the new school has not been completed, and that he requires an additional seven million Shekels in order to carry it out. This is despite the fact that last year; he stated that the building would be ready to accept students already in September 2006. In the last little while, the school has again received a commitment from Eli Aboutbul to allocate a piece of land within the framework of the planned neighborhood to be located on Mount Zichrona, to the east of the community. However, there are those who contend that these promises are nothing more than an attempt to postpone providing a reasonable solution to the Association, in light of the fact that Aboutbul has also said elsewhere that his position is that the Zichrona neighborhood will be built in approximately the years 2015-20. If this is true, we are talking about a solution for the children of today's students at the Keshet School. After all, according to the schedule which the Head of the Regional Council is forecasting, the students who are in the First Grade today will complete the Twelfth Grade and their Bagrut Matriculation examinations before the new neighborhood will be built. Hamoutal Ephron, a songwriter and conductor who lives in Zichron Yaacov and is the mother of a student in the Eighth Grade at the Democratic School, sums up the hearts' desire of many parents in the community: "the Keshet Democratic School is an existing fact that has proved itself. It is time that it received its permanent location in Zichron Yaacov."

Registration for the Coming School Year

What is certain is that the failure to provide a building for the Democratic School in Zichron Yaacov, so that it will be able to function in Zichron Yaacov has not prevented the Association from implementing its educational vision. The school lives, breathes and flourishes and the demand for places at the school exceeds the ability of the school to meet it in its current physical framework. On Monday, registration for the 2008 school year began for those who are already studying at the school this year. Next month, on the 14^th and the 22^nd of February, the school will open registration for new students who are not currently studying at the school.