Education, Empowerment, and Control: The Case of the Arabs in Israel

Physical and Educational Facilities

5 Physical and Educational Facilities School Buildings One of the perpetual problems facing Arab education in Israel has been the lack of adequate school buildings, a consequence of the discriminatory budgets, evident from the early years of the state, for the construction of the Arab schools. In a letter to the Director General of the Ministry of Education dated October 15, 1957, the Prime Minister's Advisor on Arab Affairs urged the Ministry to reconsider its decision not to allocate any funds to the construction budget for Arab schools. He wrote: I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the prevention of the construction budget for Arab schools is not a secret any more in the Arab sector. I have already received letters from Arabs who expressed their astonishment about this issue which smacks of discrimination. (State Archives 145/1292/GL) A survey conducted that year (1957) covering 82 of the 116 Arab schools reported 565 substandard rooms. The estimated cost to replace them was about 5 million pounds; Ministry of Education investment in Arab school construction up to that date was only 250,000 pounds (ibid.). In other words, the budget allocated by the Ministry of Education for the building of school rooms in the Arab sector during the state's first decade covered only 5 percent of the actual needs. 103 104 EDUCATION, EMPOWERMENT, AND CONTROL Until the early 1960s, most Arab schools were located in substandard buildings that were far from meeUng the minimal educational conditions (AI-Hamishmar May 31, 1960). In the late 1960s, 2,000 of the 3,000 classrooms in the Arab sector were rented rooms (Sason 1986, 1). The fact that most of the Arab settlements until the mid-1960s lacked official municipal status meant that the condition of the Arab schools would only worsen, since the absence of local authorities means in most cases the lack of local services. The appointed local committees for education could not afford to provide school buildings or other educationnl facilities. In addition, even those villages with local councils had many administrative and organizational problems. Council heads themselves were uncertain of their functions and authOrity. The small budgets allotted by the Ministry of the Interior to these councils, which in any case lacked experience in drawing up budgets, created formidable obstacles (AI-Haj and Rosenfeld 1990). The mobilization of the Arab population in Israel for the improvement of the conditions of Arab education started already in the mid-1950s (Hussein 1957). This struggle was also channeled through the Knesset. In January 1962, a meeting of the Knesset Education Committee discussed the severe deficiencies in the Arab educational system, including school buildings (AI-Hamishmar January 25, 1962). It was not, however, until the early 1970s that the Ministry of Education started to show any concern for improving the conditions ofArab schools. A survey of the condition of the school buildings conducted in 1972 by Rafael Yaron., of the Department of Development in the Ministry of Education, revealed a total of 3,364 classes from kindergarten to eighth grade in the Arab schools. Among them only 37 percent met the standard laid down by the Ministry of Education (49 square meters per room). Among the classrooms, 901 (31 percent) were rented, and less than half of them were ofstandard size (Haaretz December 7, 1972). The survey showed a shortage of 1,200 classrooms in the Arab sector in addition to 900 substandard classrooms that had to be replaced. The shortage of school buildings was a geneml phenomenon characterizing all parts of the Arab sector; 10 pE!rCent of the rooms were needed in mixed cities, 60 percent in Arab local authorities, and 30 percent in small Arab villages lacking municipal status (ibid.). A tangible improvement started in the late 1970s, when the Ministry of Education allocated a special budget for Arab school construction. In the mid-1980s, an official report stated that by Physical and Educational Facilities 105 1982 the shortage had decreased to 625 classrooms, which constituted only 13 percent of the total number of rooms used by Arab schools (Sason 1986). This report, however, was a bit misleading. It did not include substandard or prefabricated rooms, which were considered inadequate according to all measures. In fact, the number of deficient classrooms was double that mentioned by the Ministry . Of the 5,253 classrooms in the school year 1984/85, 1,544 were...