On Monday afternoon, on very short notice, Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton summoned her ministry’s employees to an emergency meeting that was also broadcast on Zoom to hundreds of staff members throughout the country. The meeting was called because she had fired the ministry’s director general, Yigal Slovik. This was as an exceptional decision, as was his lightning dismissal. It’s normal for a director general, who is supposed to enjoy the minister’s trust, to be replaced when a new minister is appointed. But it’s not normal in the middle of the school year, and at a time when the ministry is also dealing with the coronavirus pandemic’s severe impact on the school system.
The latest challenges in the effort to combat the virus, an effort being waged on several fronts, include the campaign to vaccinate schoolchildren, figuring out how schools will operate at various grade levels and developing a comprehensive policy together with – or sometimes in opposition to – other relevant government ministries. This week, the vaccination campaign resumed in schools with help from the army’s Home Front Command and Magen David Adom, albeit in a different format than the last campaign. It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of the need for coordination between all the relevant agencies. By firing such a key player in this effort, Shasha-Biton failed this test.
According to her “associates,” Slovik was fired due to “dissatisfaction with his management style.” Aside from this vague statement, the minister has refused to discuss the issue. But Slovik claimed, via “people close to him,” that his support for vaccinating children and teens at school was one of the main causes of his falling-out with Shasha-Biton. The minister has opposed vaccinating children at school in the past, even terming it “a crime” (a statement she retracted after public criticism). But Slovik said that for him, the determining factor is the cabinet’s policy, and the Education Ministry must implement this policy in the field through deeds rather than empty words.
Slovik was appointed by Shasha-Biton in July despite the fact that he has no background or prior experience in education. His previous job was head of the counterterrorism desk at the National Security Council. Shasha-Biton said at the time that she needed someone “who is familiar with public and governmental systems and has outstanding managerial abilities.”
If it’s true that her reason for dismissing Slovik was his managerial capabilities, this mainly says something about her own ability to pick the right people. But if, as Slovik said, the dismissal stemmed from their disagreement about how to fight the coronavirus, this is cause for concern. His firing may well indicate that at the height of a complex, sensitive campaign to vaccinate Israeli children against the virus, the education system is headed by a minister who seeks to put a spoke in the wheel of government policy.
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The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
