The corridors of the Na’amat technological high school in Nazareth fall silent just before 11 a.m. A metal trolley carrying a black Styrofoam box trundles between the classrooms; at each stop, large plastic trays of hot food are distributed to each class. On the day of our visit, the students were provided with shawarma meat, pasta, peas in sauce, tomato, cucumber, and a clementine. The corridors may be quiet, but the classrooms are filled with the sound of students sitting down to eat at their desks.

The first question that may come to mind is whether 11 a.m. is not too early for lunch. “The students often come to school without [having eaten] breakfast,” school principal Lilian Hakim explains with a smile. “And the moment we do not provide a hot meal, they eat all kinds of unhealthy stuff – and then they don’t eat later. So, I provide lunch in the middle of the morning.”

The school’s nutrition coordinator, Rana Khalilah, agrees. “We no longer see the waste of money that there used to be on unhealthy food,” she says. “The students would eat lots of snacks and bring a lot of food from the outside. We no longer see bags of potato chips or peanut snacks.” F., a 10^th-grader who asked us not to use her real name, sums up the change in two sentences: “The food is really tasty, there’s plenty of it, and (we) waste less money. We go home feeling satiated.”

For many young boys and girls in Israel, feeling satiated is not something that can be taken for granted. According to figures from the National Insurance Institute, around 16 percent of Israeli households, which includes some 665,000 children, suffer from food insecurity. This relatively broad definition includes a variety of situations, from concern over the ability to obtain sufficient food to ongoing hunger. According to the NII survey, half of these children suffer from severe food insecurity, including some level of hunger. The situation is especially dire in Israel’s Arab community, where, according to figures recently released by the Finance Ministry, 42 percent of children suffer from food insecurity.

The law requires the state to run school-meal programs in elementary schools, which ensure that every child that studies for a full day receives a hot meal, but as revealed in a joint investigation by Shomrim and Calcalist in October 2022, the moment that the students graduate from sixth grade, the government has no systemic solution for them. As a result, secondary and high schools have to improvise solutions of their own – from dedicated fundraising projects to teachers themselves buying students sandwiches. All of this is based on the understanding that schools cannot fulfill their fundamental goal – teaching and educating children – when the kids’ stomachs are grumbling.

The positive change that started last year ispart of the five-year plan for Arab society – the same plan consistently being slammed by members of the current coalition and which opponents during the previous government’s tenure dismissively referred to as the Mansour Abbas Tax.

Second – and Final – Chance High-Schools

Until the last school year, the Na’amat technological school in Nazareth also suffered from this problem. “Sometimes I would encounter students who looked pale and said they were feeling dizzy in the middle of the day,” says Hakim. “When I asked them whether they had eaten or drank anything, they would tell me they had not. What’s more, whenever one of the teachers celebrated a birthday, someone would bring a cake [to the teacher’s room]. It was lovely, and the atmosphere was great, but I would see kids standing there, looking in through the window, and it would hurt. I no longer see those looks in the children’s eyes – a look that said they were hungry but were too embarrassed to ask for food.”

“We used to have a ‘warm corner’ in the morning. One of the teachers would come to school early with two members of her class, and they would make sandwiches,” Hakim adds. The funding, she says, came from whichever budgetary source was left with a small surplus or from donations. “Sometimes, teachers would buy the bread from their own pockets and refuse to be reimbursed. But the truth is that you couldn’t get to all the students. Sometimes students came late, and some didn’t want to take the food we gave out for free. So, we decided to charge one shekel for a sandwich, so the kids wouldn’t feel like it was charity. Nutrition solved all those problems for me.”

“There was also a phenomenon,” Hakim adds, “when stronger children would go around taking one shekel from every child and go buy (food for themselves), and we would sometimes discover that students were taking advantage of others. That kind of thing happens a lot less now. Even if I can’t be sure there’s a causal relationship, it used to be a common phenomenon, and now it’s almost completely disappeared.”

The positive change that started last year is part of the five-year plan for Arab society – the same plan consistently being slammed by members of the current coalition and which opponents during the previous government’s tenure dismissively referred to as the Mansour Abbas Tax. As part of the plan, funding was allocated for establishing nutrition programs in technological high schools in the Arab community.

These technological high schools are where the most underprivileged students – those at greatest risk of dropping out and those who have already dropped out of regular high schools – are enrolled. They are sometimes known as second-chance high schools and sometimes last-chance high schools. There are 124 such schools in Israel, including 25 in Arab communities, which benefit from the new program.

Since the program is only now reaching the end of its first year, it is not yet possible to collate empirical evidence that will prove whether it succeeded in reducing the attrition and absenteeism rates. According to the Education Ministry, “school principals have reported an increase in regular attendance by students, along with a high degree of satisfaction with the program, (however) it is difficult to conduct empirical research since all the schools in the Arab community are part of the nutrition plan, and it is hard to empirically compare equal groups. As for comparisons to previous years, there is no measurement from which it is possible to take a statistical sample since the attendance systems in each school are different and comprise different digital supervision characteristics.”

Indeed, as the Education Ministry points out, there is a sense among those who have seen the program at work in the field that it has been a roaring success. “We haven’t conducted any research, but there is a sense that, since the start of the school year, student attendance has been much better than in the past,” says Hakim. “It also introduces a kind of social ceremony in the classroom. Because the food comes to the classroom, it arrives on trays; we put tablecloths on the desks and then distribute the meals. We teach them that they should serve themselves and each other; they can get up and take an extra portion if they want. This is also a way to help them with some behaviors that are sometimes hard to address. For example, when they eat and leave food on their plates, we explain that they should take less next time so that nothing goes to waste. It’s a great help.”

According to Hakim, eating in the classroom creates an esprit de corps among the students and gives teachers extra access to them beyond the regular teaching hours. “The teacher is right there in the classroom, eating with them. They are keeping an eye on who is eating and who is not; if someone does not eat, they can ask them why not,” she says. “There were some cases when students didn’t eat, and the teachers could approach them because they were able to sense things that they sometimes cannot sense in larger forums.”

Nadim Masri, an attorney who chairs the National Parent-Teacher Association in the Arab sector: "Imagine being a student stuck in school all day without food. Nutrition can solve serious problems, including socio-economic problemsin this society – which is very significant.”

‘A Big Change in Attendance Rates’

At the same time as we were visiting the Nazareth high school, Tzofi Greenblatt, Leah Levinger, and Ya’akov Atzmoni – three representatives of the Education Ministry’s Education and Welfare Services division, which is responsible for at-risk children and youths – were also visiting. “We have been to all the Arab schools in the country, from the south to the north, and the nutrition issue is amazing,” says Atzmoni. “The students are happy, and the food is excellent. In all the Arab schools we have visited, it’s a huge success. It has a positive effect on the student’s attendance, no doubt about it. If you ask me, the same program should be set up in educational institutes in the Jewish sector.” According to the Education Ministry representatives, two people deserve special praise for personally pushing the program forward: Na’ama Katz, the director of the ministry department that deals with schools and special frameworks for at-risk students, and the head of the Education and Welfare Services division, Dr. Haim Moyal.

Yehoram Levy, the CEO of the Na’amat school network, would also like to see the program expanded, but he nonetheless sees one problem: Students who only come to school to get a hot meal – and then go home again. “Unfortunately, there are students who come to school just for that, but at least we manage to get them into the classroom and also to impart some knowledge,” he says. “It is a wonderful project, and I can tell you that it has proven itself. There has been a significant change in student attendance rates, and we also see a change in their day-to-day behavior. They are calmer, and it gives them a sense of home; there is something that is waiting for them.”

Nadim Masri, an attorney who chairs the National Parent-Teacher Association in the Arab sector, says that he has heard complaints that the meals are sometimes cold or arrive late and that there have been issues with storing the food until it is served to students – but, he hastens to add, these are dwarfed by the positive feedback he has received regarding the program. “Food insecurity is a serious problem,” he says. “Take the Bedouin community in the south, for example, where we know that attrition is a major problem. You’ve got the Bedouin diaspora there, spread out in the unrecognized villages, and students must get special buses to school every day. They leave home at seven o’clock in the morning and don’t get home until five or six in the evening. Imagine being a student stuck in school all day without food. Nutrition can solve serious problems, including socio-economic problems in this society – which is very significant.”

“We get feedback from school principals, who tell us that the program has led directly to a reduction in the attrition rate of students and to a drop in absenteeism,” Masri adds. “You have to understand that students might have problems at home, and they see school as somewhere that offers food security and encourages them to turn up. I was amazed to hear that. People don’t realize sometimes that a hot meal can mean the world to a child in distress or to a child who does not get fed at home. That child finds an answer to his problems at school.”

Principal Lilian Hakim, Na’amat technological high school: “The teacher is right there in the classroom, eating with them. They are keeping an eye on who is eating and whois not; if someone does not eat, they can ask them why not.”

Four Proposed Laws, Zero Progress

As things currently stand, the government-funded nutritional program only operates in ‘second chance’ high schools in the Arab community. 120 Plus 1, a non-profit organization that has been involved in preventing food insecurity among children in recent years, set up a forum known as “Recipe for Success,” which encompassed educational networks, welfare organizations, and PTOs. Now it wants to expand that forum to include all Israeli high schools for at-risk children.

According to surveys carried out by the group, around 60,000 students in secondary education suffer from food insecurity: of them, around a third study in schools for at-risk children. Expanding the nutrition program to these schools would alleviate a large proportion of the problem at the relatively low cost of around 40 million shekels ($11 million) annually.

“Thus far, the program has been given a very positive reception,” says Roi Maor, policy director at 120 Plus 1. “Students want a hot meal, which helps them remain in school and to persevere – and it seems that it has succeeded in its goal of strengthening the school framework for students at risk of dropping out of the education system. So, that hot meal is important on a physical level, since it allows students to remain in school and to study, but also on a pedagogical level, as part of the belief that school should be somewhere that students can rely on, somewhere that provides an answer to all the student’s needs.”

“Unlike regular high schools,” Maor adds, “the technological schools in Arab and Jewish communities are attended by students with similar characteristics. So, if this solution is needed and helpful in Arab schools, there’s no reason not to adopt it in Jewish schools. It will come at a budgetary cost, but student attrition costs are far greater. We shouldn’t look at this as an expenditure but as part of our investment in the education system.”

As for the rest of the hungry students – those who do not attend technological schools – the situation is more complex. Unlike the second-change schools, where the proportion of students suffering from food insecurity is relatively high, there may be just a couple of students in that situation out of hundreds. These students not only need to be identified but they must be offered assistance in a manner that does not shame them.

“At schools for at-risk children, when there is no hot meal program, the school finds it hard to act as one unit,” Maor explains. “At regular schools, it is a sporadic problem, so for a regular school to start dealing with nutrition creates extra pressure on the system and the management. Sometimes it just does not make sense to introduce the program for a handful of children. Therefore, any plan to expand the program to regular schools must start by mapping out the needs and the existing infrastructure to see how to build the program in the smartest way possible.”

As Shomrim reported in February, there are currently four pieces of legislation on the Knesset’s agenda – which 120 Plus 1 helped draft – proposing that the food program be expanded to all schools for at-risk students. The bills were submitted by MKs Yinon Azoulay (Shas), Youssef Atauna (Hadash-Ta’al), Waleed Alhwashla, and Iman Khatib-Yassin (both United Arab List). However, none of these bills has even made it as far as a preliminary reading in the Knesset. In addition, there are also bills submitted by MK Na’ama Lazimi (Labor), which seeks to provide a hot meal for every student in Israel, and former Welfare Minister Meir Cohen (Yesh Atid), who wants the state to provide a sandwich for every student in secondary education.

At the moment, it does not seem that the current government sees any urgency in pushing through these bills – or even in advancing alternative solutions – and it does not appear that a pilot program like the one in the Arab community is on the agenda. The Education Ministry said in response that it continues to push for the expansion of the program in collaboration with the National Council for Food Security.

Shomrim will continue to report on this subject.