Israeli Teacher Strike

It's not easy to find much info on the almost 2 month long Israeli teachers strike of secondary school teachers. Last week, I posted some stuff from the Jerusalem Post on Norm's Notes, where, remarkably, a 100,000 people rallied to their support in Tel Aviv. The strike has fomented lots of discussion about education reform that echoes some of the stuff over here.

Photo from Jerusalem Post website

Some teachers say they will not go back even if ordered to by an injunction. They should look at the 2005 contract our UFT leaders arranged with the NYCDOE as a model NOT to follow.

I emailed a teacher who moved to Israel after being railroaded out of Far Rockaway HS. (One of the charges was his asking me to come to speak to a union meeting after school and he wrote a scathing indictment of the UFT hierarchy, focusing on then Queens district HS and now Queens borough rep Rona Freiser, but that's a story for another day.) Hopefully we can get some first hand info back from him.

George Schmidt is working on an article for Substance and sent the following request:

Looking for JPG photos from Israeli teachers' strike, Tel Aviv rally
We are trying to do a decent story on the high school teachers strike in Israel either for December (currently on deadline) or January (shamefully, but that's the best we might be able to do). The last time we had a major strike that had been virtually blacked out in the US media was Vancouver, which we covered in November 2005 (still available in back issues on our old website, www.substancenews.com). I assume there are thousands of teachers here in Chicago, in New York, and elsewhere, who have friends who've been on strike in Israel and who have access to photographs and other stories about that strike.

George Schmidt
Csubstance@aol.com