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Some parents had called for Zoom classes on Sunday to be cancelled in protest when it seemed that grades 5-10 would be home full-time during the third lockdown. The National Parents Organization said in a statement, prior to the reversal of the decision, “We will not allow the members of the cabinet to continue abusing our children.”Many medical experts outside the Health Ministry had questioned the wisdom of closing the schools during the third lockdown. Dr. Alexander Gileles-Hillel, a pediatrician who specializes in pulmonology at Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem told the Jerusalem Post when the third lockdown rules were first proposed last week, “In areas that are green, there is no reason at all to close the schools.”Gezer Regional Council head Rotem Yadlin spoke at the Education Committee meeting on Sunday and called for the entire education system to remain open, saying, “this health crisis is not just corona, it is the mental crisis that affects girls and boys across the country. And someone needs to understand the size of the fracture that will stay with us even after the corona is gone.”Ninth graders have been in school for a total of six days since the second closure,” she said. “They are home alone most of the day, in front of the computer, and we see a dramatic increase in suicides, obesity, addictions and depression among teens.”Children need a teacher who will look them in the eye, who will recognize the distress before it develops,” Yadlin said. “We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to them.”She said that an effective solution that had been proposed was a return to the traffic-light plan, with different rules for parts of the country according to morbidity rates. “This encourages the authorities to reduce morbidity – and at the same time, the teaching staff should be vaccinated and return to school.”During the debate on Thursday, the head of the Teachers Union, Yaffa Ben David, said that teaching staff should be vaccinated as quickly as possible. She posted on her Facebook page: “Our requirement is basic – working conditions that provide protection for the health of educational staff. It is unthinkable that the teaching workers who are on the frontline will not be vaccinated. If this situation continues, we will take all measures to require the country to protect them.״Health Minister Yuli Edelstein announced Saturday night that he had instructed the director general of his ministry, Prof. Chezy Levy, to facilitate the vaccination of teaching staff.