Educational psychologists and counselors, kindergarten teachers, and teachers in certain subjects will be eligible for recruitment grants of up to NIS 30,000 (just over $8,133) if they are willing to work in Gaza border communities during the school year that starts next week, the Tekuma Authority, Education and Finance Ministries announced Monday.
The cash will be offered only to new employees in the region, now called Tekuma, who have been employed for an entire school year in at least a third of a full-time position.
It will apply to teachers in math, English, computer studies, physics, biology, chemistry, technological subjects, and “therapeutic” subjects such as health and art.
Teachers already working in the region will be awarded “stability grants” of up to NIS 8,000 ($2,170).
All the grants will be in addition to salaries. The size will depend on the number of hours worked.
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They will be paid in two installments: added to the November salary (paid in December) and the May salary, paid in June.
A bullet-shuttered window of the entrance to a kindergarten is seen in Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 11, 2023 (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Most of the 30,000 children who were evacuated from the Tekuma region have returned, although precise figures will only be available after school starts on September 1.
They were moved to other parts of the country after Hamas terrorists invaded the region on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 to the Gaza Strip. Of the latter, 105 remain in the enclave, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Many youngsters hid in protected rooms in their homes for hours as terrorists rampaged through their communities, and saw evidence of unspeakable acts of barbarity as they were evacuated. Many also lost friends and family.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch said border area students would receive “the best education in Israel.” The grants, he said, were not only a reward for the recipients’ “sense of mission and personal commitment but a direct investment in the future of the students and the communities” living in the region.
Ohad Elkabetz, senior deputy to the Finance Ministry’s commissioner of wages, said that strengthening public frameworks “lies at the core” of government’s policy for the Gaza border region.
“It is essential to bolster educational teams to address the student’s pedagogical, social, and emotional challenges… as well as to manage the complexities and extraordinary issues arising from the intensity of incidents, their consequences, and their prolonged absence from their place of residence,” Elkabetz said.
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