The start of the school year in Israel is never simple: This year, kindergarten and special education administrative staff are on strike in some municipalities, only a last-minute compromise enabled Ethiopian Israeli children in Petah Tikva to start first grade, and on the first day of school, pupils attacked a teacher in a school near Jerusalem.

For those living on the geographic and economic peripheries, the educational challenges are especially dire.  However, due to intensive work initiated by SHATIL in collaboration with disabilities rights organizations, local parents committees, the Forum for Arab Education in the Negev and others, the government is finally taking the horrendous conditions in the Elkhanan special education school in the Negev Bedouin city of Rahat seriously. In a recent headline, Israel's largest daily, Yediot Achronot, wrote: "Rahat Municipality: Special Education Pupils in Rahat – on the Floor with the Flies."

Indeed, parents and activists claim horrific neglect including seriously disabled children lying inactive on a stone floor covered in flies or in their own waste while teachers drink coffee. Some parents are keeping their children home after discovering visible wounds on their children. The ad-hoc coalition of organizations brought together by SHATIL submitted complaints to the Minister of Education, the police and the Knesset – and also went to the press.

"The long list of recommendations in a municipality report written a year ago have not been implemented and we're saying implement them now," said SHATIL advocacy consultant Shmulik David, who initiated the collaboration. The report said conditions at the school and in Rahat special education schools in general "bordered on scandal and that the children were at risk for their lives."

"After threatening the school year would not start, we finally saw some action," said David. "Problematic management personnel were dismissed, the Ministry of Education is conducting an emergency assessment of the school and the Rahat municipality expressed readiness to completely re-organize the school. And we are preparing a Supreme Court petition."

NIF News will keep our readers posted on developments.