Due to Education Ministry Cutbacks, Only a Short School Day Available for Disabled Arab Bedouin Child in the Naqab
Ten-year-old Jibril Ziyadna from Rahat in the Naqab (Negev) suffers from osteoporosis, which leads to constant fractures and breakages to his bones from the slightest movements. Several years ago the Ministry of Education (MOE) decided that Jibril, who moves around using a wheelchair, would attend the Ibn Khaldoun elementary school, which is a school from the regular education system and not a special needs school, in order to give him a better opportunity to integrate into his community and eventually into the labor market. The MOE also decided that a permanent assistant would be assigned to accompany Jibril throughout the school day, in order to protect him from injury while at school.
As the MOE has done in the past, at the beginning of the current school year, it decided to cut the assistant's hours from 40 hours per week to 26 hours, which has forced Jibril to leave school early before the end of the school day. On 2 April 2009, Adalah sent a pre-petition to the Attorney General's office demanding that the MOE be compelled to resume funding for a full work week for the assistant to enable Jibril to exercise his right to education.
In the pre-petition, Adalah Attorney Morad el-Sana argued forcing the child to leave school early is a violation of his constitutional right to equality, and a breach of the Compulsory Education Law - 1949, which obliges the MOE to provide an educational framework and appropriate educational conditions for every student in the country. Adalah emphasized that making Jibril leave school early each day before his classmates is likely to cause him psychological harm and to entrench a sense of detachment, therefore jeopardizing attempts to integrate him into a mainstream school.
The Attorney General's office has transferred the pre-petition to the MOE and asked the latter to issue a response. Adalah will petition the Supreme Court of Israel if the MOE refuses to increase the number working hours of the assistant assigned to Jibril.
