Cities of Excellence Network

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the education system in Israel has experienced an upheaval. It immediately closed and moved to distance learning and later to hybrid learning with frequent transitions and mixes of in-school and home-based learning. During this period, the central government has been struggling to provide schools with coherent regulations and ongoing support. On the ground however, the municipalities proved to perform better, with their local leadership taking responsibility. Now, as a result, there are voices in the government and the public discourse that push to transfer more responsibility for education to the local government.

The foundation’s roadmap in high schools identified the municipalities as key partners, creating 30 joint programs with cities that promoted the five-unit agenda. The impact of these local programs multiplied when it was joined by a clear and determined policy by the Ministry of Education. Therefore, in order to encourage shared learning and the durability of this effort, we approached the Institute for Local Government at the Tel Aviv University, and collaborated to create a professional network for these municipalities. The ‘Cities of Excellence’ network, that started to operate in 2018, has become a hub for 48 cities that joined, being provided with training, data and professional convening.

The network is chaired by Aliza Bloch, Mayor of Beit Shemesh and is managed by the Institute for Local Government at the Tel Aviv University, headed by Ofir Pines-Paz, former Minister of Interior. The network conducts professional courses for the municipal ‘excellence coordinators’, provides the municipalities with organizational and professional consulting, convenes the heads of the education departments and the mayors, executes seminars and conferences and annually publishes ‘Israel’s excellence map’, that shows the results of five-unit mathematics in each city. From time to time, the network’s leaders advocate the excellence agenda on the media and in policy meetings.

Our initial intention was to exit this partnership, with the successful culmination of our high school program. The goal was for ‘Cities of Excellence’ to continue its activity by relying mostly on self-generated income from membership fees and payment for professional services. This goal proved to be difficult, particularly during the pandemic period and the consequential budgetary difficulties across government agencies. As a result, we faced the option of closing the network, or providing it with additional assistance in order for it to support our agenda in middle schools. In discussion with the leaders of the network, and because of the growing impact of local authorities in Israel, we are now recommending an additional grant.

The heart of this second phase is to create a trilateral partnership with the Ministry of Education and the foundation. The foundation already started collaborating directly with municipalities that are interested to expand their circle of excellence in middle schools. In these emerging programs, the municipality commits to opening additional excellence classes in middle school and the foundation assists with learning materials and professional development. The idea now is to bring the government on board as well, with the goal of 30 municipal programs, in which the government will ensure that additional teaching hours are allocated over the long term, that the position of a municipal coordinator is tenured and that local and central policies are effectively aligned.

The network will add to its ongoing activities the middle school agenda. It will continue to organize professional development for municipal heads of education departments, their excellence coordinators and consultants. It will open special courses for school-based excellence coordinators and convene peer learning between the cities to encourage learning from case studies and site visits. The ‘Excellence Map’ will add an additional layer of the percentage of students who learn in excellence classes in middle school and an annual report on the Status of Excellence will be published with the map. Continuous efforts will be made to collect membership fees from the municipalities and to charge for the participation in courses and workshops.

* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 422