"Stealing horses under the cover of war": Organizations demand to stop the cuts in special education

The expected cut of hundreds of millions of shekels in the budgets for special education and at-risk youth, which was revealed two months ago in Calcalist, is sparking public outrage. 12 organizations that care for children with disabilities have appealed to the Ministry of Education demanding to stop the cut, which they say will harm tens of thousands of students, and are accusing the ministry of pushing the cut through in a "sneak attack" under the cover of Operation "Lion's Roar".

MK Adi Mazuz from Yesh Atid is demanding an urgent emergency meeting of the Knesset Education Committee due to the "abuse of special education students".

As revealed by Calcalist in June, the Ministry of Education is making a broad cut in the budget for special education and at-risk youth classes in regular high schools, the value of which likely amounts to hundreds of millions of shekels. According to Calcalist's calculations, the cut in communication classes for autistic children alone is expected to reach 40 million shekels. For every autistic student or student with severe mental disorders beyond the standard, the school will lose 60,000 shekels.

The move is presented by the ministry as a correction of a mistake in the formula. But in practice, it is a formula that has worked for many years and is now being changed for the purpose of budget cuts. It seems this is the first move in a series of measures to cut the special education budget, which grew to about 28 billion shekels in 2026.

In a letter sent by 12 organizations that care for children with disabilities, including ALUT, ILAN, and AKIM, to the Deputy Director of Budgets at the Ministry of Education, Dudi Mizrahi, they argue that "this is a sneak attack whose practical meaning is a broad cut in the budget for special classes and harm to the right of tens of thousands of students with disabilities to receive special education services". They also write that it is unclear how a "normative threshold" of 6 students for a communication class was defined when 70% of them have at least seven students.

The Ministry of Education stated:

"There is no cut in the special education budget. On the contrary: in the transition from the 2025/26 school year to 2026/27, the special education budget increased by more than 2.5 billion shekels. This is about reducing distortions in the budgeting mechanism in high schools that have been created over the years. The Ministries of Education and Finance have updated the budgeting model to ensure that special education resources are allocated according to needs, and that allocations that do not reflect the actual response provided are not created."