Mevo Hagalil: timetable requirements, version 0.1

Vegman's rules for the Mevo Hagalil weekly timetable, each with an ID, a translation, an interpretation a solver can use, a check against the timetable the school actually achieved, and the open questions. Also available as a sortable table.

IDs: D source documents, R requirements stated by Vegman, S facts observed in the school's own timetable, Q open questions, N next steps. Click any ID to jump to it. Underlined terms explain themselves on hover.

Captured 2026-09-05 from Vegman, deputy manager of Mevo Hagalil primary school (grades 1-6), Israel. This is the working input document for implementation. Every item has an ID: D = source document, R = requirement stated by Vegman, S = fact observed in the school's current timetable, Q = open question, N = next step. Refer to items by ID.

Overview

Vegman gave fourteen rules, in Hebrew, describing how Mevo Hagalil's weekly timetable must be built, plus two reference documents showing the timetable the school actually achieved for the 2026-27 school year: a Google Sheet exported from the Tik-Tak software, and a photo of the physical magnet board. This document records each rule verbatim, translates it, interprets it as a constraint a solver can use, checks it against the achieved timetable where possible, and lists what is still unknown. It is deliberately a working document: the R items are the input, the Q items are what must be answered before the rules are complete.

Summary

• The school has 18 classes, three per grade, a five-day week of 33 periods per class, and heavy co-teaching: 42 percent of class-slots have two named teachers, more once assistants are counted. This is a Ofek Hadash primary school, so the teacher-hours model is the primary-school one, not the high-school one described in the research brief.
• Of the fourteen rules, six are structural facts confirmed by the data (R-01, R-02, R-03, R-09, R-11 in its per-grade reading, R-12 in shape). Five are teacher-welfare rules that the achieved timetable only partly satisfies (R-05, R-06, R-07), which means they are probably soft or need a precise definition (Q-05 to Q-08). Three depend on subject information the data does not contain (R-08, R-13, R-14), because the sheet has only teacher names and the board's colour code has no legend.
• The achieved timetable contains structures Vegman did not list: staff-meeting slots that block teachers, grade-wide music, choir and orchestra blocks, cross-grade mentoring pairs, class splits with a national-service soldier, and a Tuesday block where all grade 5 classes meet ten staff at once. These must be modelled as fixed or pre-placed events (S-05 to S-08).

Bottom line

The rules are enough to start modelling the domain, and not yet enough to run a solver. Three inputs unlock everything: the colour legend or a Tik-Tak export with subjects (N-01), a teacher table with weekly hours, part-time days and late or early constraints (N-02), and a curriculum table of weekly periods per subject per grade with double-period rules (N-03). The five ambiguous rules need a one-line answer each (Q-05 to Q-09). With those, Mevo Hagalil becomes the first benchmark instance for the product.

Detailed explanation

D. Source documents

D-02 and D-03 are meant to be equivalent. A cell-by-cell comparison of the Sunday block confirms they match, with small later edits on the board (for example an added magnet "ליאת" in class ב' תאנה, Sunday period 5). The board is the more recent state.

R. Requirements as stated by Vegman

Each item: the Hebrew original, the English translation, the interpretation as a constraint, what the achieved timetable shows, and open questions. Hard means must never be violated; soft means minimised with a penalty.

"בוא נתחיל מזה" — Vegman: "let's start with this." The following three were added after.

S. Facts observed in the achieved timetable

Q. Open questions

• Q-01 What are the clock times of periods 1 to 7 and the breaks? Does period 7 differ in length? Needed for the printed timetable, not for solving.
• Q-02 What is the exact derivation of individual and staying hours from frontal hours for this school? Ofek Hadash sets 36 hours as 23 frontal, 4 individual and 9 staying for a full post; part-time posts scale, and age reductions apply. A per-teacher table (N-02) removes the need to encode the formula.
• Q-03 Must individual and staying hours be placed in specific grid slots by the solver, or only counted? If placed, do they have their own constraints, such as individual hours needing pupils present, therefore not after the class's last lesson?
• Q-04 Is the no-gaps rule (R-05) hard for every teacher, including part-time and specialist teachers?
• Q-05 For R-06, must the period-1 start be in the homeroom teacher's own class? Is 3 a hard minimum?
• Q-06 For R-07, is "twice" exactly 2, at least 2, or at most 2? Does it apply to part-time teachers, and to teachers whose contract excludes the long day?
• Q-07 For R-08, is it exactly one mathematics lesson per day or at least one? Does "language" mean Hebrew only? Does it apply to Tuesday?
• Q-08 For R-11, does "not the same day" mean different days per grade (as achieved) or per class? Is the grade 4 Tuesday block a fourth trip to model the same way?
• Q-09 Who are teachers x, y, z in R-12, and in which grades do they work?
• Q-10 For R-14, which subjects are core, and is "end of day" the last period of each day or specifically period 7? Hard or soft?
• Q-11 Are the staff-meeting slots (S-05) fixed inputs that the timetable must respect, or are they placed after the timetable?
• Q-12 Are the special programmes (S-06, S-07) fixed for the year, so they can be pre-placed, or should the solver be free to move them?
• Q-13 Rooms: does the school need room assignment at all, beyond the gym and any shared spaces? The data shows no rooms.
• Q-14 Which is the authoritative current state, the board (3 Sep) or Tik-Tak (30 Aug)? Are changes made on the board copied back into Tik-Tak?

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A. Vegman's answers, 6 September 2026

Answers to Q-01 to Q-19, received by message. Each answer is filed on its question in the table; the requirements affected (R-05, R-06, R-07, R-08, R-09, R-11, R-14) and the new facts (S-11 to S-17) were updated from them. Follow-up questions are Q-20 to Q-24.

• Q-01 Period clock times: Period 1 08:00-08:45; 2 08:45-09:25; breakfast 09:25-09:35; break 09:35-09:55; 3 09:55-10:40; 4 10:40-11:25; break 11:25-11:45; 5 11:45-12:30; 6 12:30-13:15; lunch 13:15-13:35; break 13:35-13:55; 7 13:55-14:45 (50 minutes).
• Q-02 Hour derivation formula: Confidential; the teacher table cannot be shared during the trial phase. Work with counts derived from the export.
• Q-03 Placing non-frontal hours: Count only; do not place individual and staying hours in the grid.
• Q-04 No-gaps rule scope: Applies to all teachers. Gap budget per teacher = individual + staying hours remaining after deductions: every teacher working on Tuesday spends 2 staying hours in the after-teaching staff meeting; almost every teacher has 2 lunch duties (not in the export), each consuming 1 individual hour. Example: 24 frontal, 5 individual, 4 staying becomes 24 frontal, 3 individual, 2 staying, so exactly 5 gaps. Day edges are not gaps: a gap has a lesson before and after it. If a teacher is placed on 25 frontal slots, one individual hour is already in the grid and 4 gaps remain.
• Q-05 Homeroom period-1 rule: Own class only. Soft rule; sometimes there is no choice.
• Q-06 Long-day rule semantics: Teachers working 4 or more days: exactly 2 long days, except ענת and עידית who asked for 3. Part-time: depends on the post.
• Q-07 Daily math and language semantics: Mathematics exactly 1 per day; language at least 1 per day, including Tuesday. In half-class lessons each half gets language with the homeroom teacher, which counts as one language hour per child.
• Q-08 Trip day semantics: Different day per grade, as achieved.
• Q-09 Identity of x, y, z: Vegman offers to list them; detail requested as Q-20.
• Q-10 Core subjects definition: Strong preference, not hard. 'End of day' means period 7 only.
• Q-11 Staff meetings as input: Fixed in advance; the timetable adapts to them.
• Q-12 Special programmes fixed?: Fixed for the year; the solver must not move them.
• Q-13 Rooms needed?: Yes, three shared rooms. Science room: קרן ס. and שירלי; when one teaches with a second teacher, the other must teach alone to a whole class. Gym: אתי ח. and רגב, as few simultaneous uses as possible. Music shelter: נגה and שני, as few simultaneous uses as possible.
• Q-14 Authoritative state: Board, sheet and Tik-Tak are all kept updated; the board of 3 Sep is the newest.
• Q-15 ליבנה double booking: No clash. On Tuesday period 2 ליבנה is in ד' כלנית; the 30 Aug export is stale for that cell.
• Q-16 Unscheduled day equals part-time day?: Always a fixed day off: part-time teachers are scheduled only on their working days. Absence in the export means a hard unavailable day.
• Q-17 Meeting attendees: Management: אורלי, קרן ס., יפעת. Mathematics: אורלי, רעות. Individual-hours: אורלי, שלי, לירן, יפעת. Deputies: אורלי, קרן.
• Q-18 Music programme staffing: Homeroom teacher versus an external teacher, each class separately. Monday: half the class with the homeroom, the other half with the external teacher; Wednesday the halves swap. So no clash with שני.
• Q-19 Soldiers as named people: Five soldiers. They are not yet assigned to slots.

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N. Next steps

• N-01 Obtain the colour legend for the board, or better, a Tik-Tak export that includes subjects. Without subjects R-08, R-13 and R-14 cannot be modelled or checked.
• N-02 Obtain a teacher table: name, subjects, frontal hours, individual hours, staying hours, working days, late-arrival and early-leave constraints, homeroom class if any, and which teachers always pair with the homeroom (R-12).
• N-03 Obtain the curriculum table: for each grade, weekly periods per subject, which subjects are taught as double periods, and which are co-taught.
• N-04 Get one-line answers to Q-05 to Q-10 to fix hard versus soft.
• N-05 Transcribe the full board (D-03) once the legend exists, and diff it against D-02 to learn what was changed by hand between 30 Aug and 3 Sep; those hand edits reveal the constraints Vegman applies without stating them.
• N-06 Encode Mevo Hagalil as the first instance in the product's domain model and as an XHSTT file, so the achieved timetable can be scored against the rules.

Glossary

Terms used above. On the web version each underlined term shows this on hover.

• Ofek Hadash: the 2008 reform governing teacher employment in Israeli primary and junior-high schools. A full post is 36 weekly hours split into frontal, individual and staying hours.
• Frontal, individual and staying hours: frontal hours are ordinary lessons with a class; individual hours are small groups of up to five pupils; staying hours are preparation, meetings and duties on site.
• Homeroom teacher (מחנכת): the teacher responsible for a class, who teaches it most of the week.
• Co-teaching: two adults in the classroom for the same lesson.
• Hard and soft constraints: a hard constraint must never be broken; a soft one is a preference with a penalty weight.
• Tik-Tak (תיק-תק): the Israeli school-management and timetabling software the school currently uses.
• XHSTT: the XML format used by researchers to describe a school timetabling problem and its solution; the product's domain model mirrors it.
• Pre-placed event: a lesson or activity whose time is fixed before solving.
• National-service soldier (חיילת): a young woman doing national service as a classroom assistant.