Israel reopened some schools on Sunday but the bid to edge back to normality as coronavirus concerns ease was boycotted by several municipalities and many parents who cited poor government preparation.A girl speaks on her mobile phone while arriving to her elementary school in Sderot as it reopens following the ease of restrictions preventing the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Israel.

Kitted with masks and hand-cleaners, the first three grades of elementary school and the last two grades of high school were allowed back, redistributed in classes capped at 15 pupils to enforce social-distancing. If the move does not unleash fresh contagions, other grades and kindergartens may soon follow suit.

Many parents breathed more freely at seeing off their children after minding them for some six weeks – a mass home-confinement that had helped drive unemployment to 27% and sapped between 4% and 12% of daily GDP.

“We are excited and concerned at the same time but we have to take the first step,” Hila Mizrachi, a 37-year-old teacher, told Reuters as she escorted her own daughter to school.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government cast the reopening as voluntary as entire municipalities – including that of Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv and those of the country’s 21 percent Arab minority – announced their schools would stay closed, for now.