Ongoing Convening for Municipalities that Promote the Study of Five Units in Mathematics and the Sciences

In the past few years, municipalities across the country have joined the national program of doubling the number of 5-unit graduates. Fourteen of them decided to respond to this opportunity and create deeper professional infrastructure around the five-unit goal. To do so, we created a joint program with each of them in order to nurture clinical teaching practices that would support an increased number of students over the long term.

The work of each municipality is independent, however they can learn from one another and in some cases can even confront similar challenges together. Therefore, a couple of years ago, we responded to their request and invited them to engage in a process of mutual learning, which included quarterly meetings, residential workshops and site visits.  In addition, we invited the managers of each city program to join a 120-hour professional development course at Bar Ilan University. This course has also attracted representatives from cities with whom the foundation does not have a joint program.

At this point, as we are preparing to scale up our collaborative programs with municipalities, we are becoming concerned about the sustainability of the effort. With this concern in mind, we approached the Institute for Local Government in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University.  The Institute is chaired by former Minister of the Interior, Ophir Paz-Pines, and has served as a convener for municipalities on different shared issues since its inception in 2012. One of its flagship programs is the Forum for Municipalities and Local Authorities located on the Israeli coastal plain, which is closely aligned with the Federation of Local Authorities in Israel.

In response to our approach, the Institute is proposing to establish a forum for municipalities, which will concentrate on the promotion of excellence in mathematics and science education. Thirty mayors, who prioritize this goal in their agenda and budgets, will be invited to join the forum, together with their education department heads. They will meet four times a year to learn together from experts, conduct peer learning and discuss their shared needs.  The forum will convene an annual one-day conference, routinely update a database of indicators from all cities in Israel, create a designated website, and publish an annual report. The report will be disseminated among government bodies, media and decision-makers, reporting on the status and progress of Israel’s cities and their bid to improve 5-unit mathematics and science achievement.

In the first three years of activity, the forum will operate with declining funding from the foundation and increasing funding from the participating municipalities. After three years, the Institute plans for the forum to maintain its operation by relying solely on participation fees.