The City of Bet Shemesh recently announced it would be opening municipal nursery/kindergarten schools for girls in the Haredi community. The announcement claimed that these institutions would be run in the style of the classic Haredi Bais Yaakov schools.
I am not quite sure what the benefit of this is for the city. Obviously such schools would likely be a bit cheaper for parents and the schedules might be more coordinated with the general systems, but from the perspective of the city I dont get it. Why get into that mess? It might be a little cheaper for them to run this type of school than to fund the private schools, but the funding to the private schools is not going to stop so I dont see the point.
Obviously the rabbonim of the Haredi community are against this move. The rabbis have all put out statements in opposition (a letter posted in English signed by many rabbis will be posted below) and the various Haredi newspapers have all written against it as well. They consider it a stumbling block and being not led by the gedolei yisrael and it will lead to much worse things.
This is not really new - not the initiative and not the opposition. The State decided several years ago to start "Mamachs" - a network of public schools for the Haredi community. Haredi leadership fought, and continues to fight, against those as well. The Haredi community does not want anyone else form outside the community, and especially the State, to get involved in educating Haredi children.
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