New School Year Opens in Shadow of War
Despite the need to use Youth Aliyah campuses as emergency evacuation camps, the 2006/07 school year opened on time. At Ben Yakir 150 students are registered – 117 in seventh to ninth grade and 33 in 10th to 12th grade. “We had to work extra hard to open on time,” remarked Yossi Krothamer, Director of Ben Yakir, “and we were not able to prepare the new students as thoroughly as we usually do but we owe it to our own students that they should not suffer because we gave so much to other children in the summer.This is what motivates my staff even though we were unable to take a summer vacation.Forthe second successive Ben Yakir has been able to take in an additional 30 students thanks to additional funding from the village’s strategic partner the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) – Ha’Keren Le’Yedidut.
"At Kiryat Yearim about 100 students are registered including 32 teenagers studying externally at high schools in Jerusalem but living at the village. “I would say that about 35% of our students are Ethiopian immigrants,” said the village’s new director Shimoni Peretz, “and the rest are Israeli born from disadvantaged families as well as many new immigrants from the Former Soviet Union.
Ramat Hadassah Szold has registered 300 students this year. “For the firsttimeour11th grade students will be studying at the village’s new high school,” said the village’s Deputy Director Michal Stern. “Even though the campus could not be used because of the war we were able to hold preparatory programs for our new students during the last weeks of August.
”At Hadassah Neurim 210 students have been registered in the 10th –12th grade residential high school while an additional 290 students will learn there as external pupils. “We had five days to get the campus ready after the wear and tear caused by the war in the summer,” said Hadassah Neurim’s Director Nachum Katz. “We worked around the clock and succeeded. The school looked just as good as at the start of any regular year.” Katz is confident that this year’s academic results will continue the school’s tradition of improving as each year passes.
At Nitzana in the Negev over 50 new immigrant students from the former Soviet Union are registered for the ninth one year SELAH Science program which combines desert science studies with Hebrew and Jewish courses for post high-school pre-academic students. “The course has such a prestigious reputation,” explained Nitzana Director David Palmach, “that we had no problems findinghighqualitystudentsdespite the disruptions caused by the war.” The current KEDMA course at Nitzana for new immigrants from Ethiopia will finish this month and the graduates will go on to study at academic and vocation colleges around the country. Both KEDMA and SELAH Science are supported by the Denver/Boulder Jewish community through the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado.