The parents’ committee at the new Ronit Elkabetz secondary school in southern Tel Aviv, Israel, announced that it would shut down classes on Tuesday over the admission of migrant children to the school.
In a letter to the Tel Aviv municipality, the parents accused the city of having "failed" to uphold the admissions policy agreed upon with them, which they claimed had resulted in "unequal treatment of children from the Kfar Shalem neighbourhood."
The parents said they would continue the strike until their demands were addressed, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Sunday.
The municipality rejected the parents’ claims, saying migrant children would comprise less than 10 percent of the school’s student body.
In a letter to the municipality last month, parents alleged that migrant children had been admitted without meeting the same requirements as other applicants, according to the report.
"Only after registration ended did it become clear that students from families of asylum seekers, refugees and migrant workers had also been placed at the school – material information that was not disclosed to parents in advance, thereby denying them the opportunity to make an informed decision," they wrote.
This "could directly harm the future of our children and of the institution as a whole," the parents committee said.
The municipality rejected the allegations, saying the migrant students had not been admitted to or placed in the school’s arts programmes.
"Therefore, the claim that these students were placed in a specialised track without meeting its admissions requirements is incorrect," it stated.
The dispute comes weeks after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the concentration of migrant children in two south Tel Aviv schools constituted racial segregation and ordered authorities to integrate them into other schools.
The case also follows years of controversy over the segregation of non-Israeli children in Tel Aviv's education system.
The municipality has previously faced legal challenges over schools attended almost exclusively by children of asylum seekers and migrant workers, with petitioners arguing that the city must integrate them with Israeli students under the principle of equality.
The Tel Aviv municipality said in response that every child in the city is entitled to compulsory education "regardless of religion, race or sex."
