Mayor Moshe Abutbol had picked a fight with the Minister of Education, Gideon Saar, over the Minister's decision to not shut down the School for Languages and Cultures in RBS, and his promise that if necessary he will reclassify it as a super-regional school.

Abutbol claims that the decision to close the school and merge it with other schools had been arrived at by professional teams from the ministry, and he would not accept any decision he called "politically motivated" by the minister that ignores the professional recommendations.

The minister, who does have the final word, basically told him to jump in the lake. After Abutbol screamed loud enough, it is Israel after all, Saar agreed to come down to Bet Shemesh and see the school and the situation for himself.

Yesterday was the day. Saar came to Bet Shemesh and was given the grand tour of the half empty school building and the nearby set of caravans housing hundreds of cramped kids.

Did it impress him to change his mind? That is the one thing the article doesn't say. The article in Kikar Shabbos, describing the events, goes to great lengths describing how Abutbol and Greenberg gave him the grand tour. It describes some of the words of Saar - he condemned the recent death threat anonymously sent to the mayor, and he spoke about the need to solve the crisis the Haredi school shave with a serious shortage of classrooms and promised the ministry would work hard to solve that problem and approve building more.

Yet not one word about him changing his mind or anything from Saar about the specific school he came to discuss.

That leads me to suspect that Saar was not convinced and did not change his mind. Abutbol's screaming got him to come down to Bet Shemesh, which is always good and beneficial for a city to be visited by a minister, but it seems like that's all he got. Of course, this might be wrong. Maybe Saar really is looking into it, and maybe their establishment of a professional committee is serious. It just seems to me, more from what wasn't said than from what was, that Saar basically told Abutbol to take a hike.

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Update: I am told by somebody involved and knowledgable about the meeting yesterday that my evaluation is basically correct. The issue has been shelved, Saar said he is not closing the school, but is, sort of in exchange, compensating the mayor by agreeing to build many more classrooms for the haredi children who have been learning in caravans until now.
The school will remain for the coming year, and they will probably fight about it again next year, depending on how the registration goes for the school in this coming year.