In the hallways of the La Torre school there is no longer a trace of the mud. The flood destroyed the classroom materials on the center’s ground floor, but the floor and walls have already recovered their color. They are finally white again, after days of cleaning by workers and volunteers. There are still no children in the hallways, but some mothers from the district of La Torre, one of the areas closest to the city of Valencia affected by DANA, hope that normal classes will resume in a few weeks.
While this Monday other schools have already reopened their doors, in La Torre municipal workers opened boxes and distributed new furniture in the classes, especially chairs and tables. Gardeners and transporters replaced the soil in the flower pots, after removing much of the mud accumulated in recent days. “It is a school that has just been built and I think this has done a lot to make the structure good. They have told us that we will return in fifteen days at most,” explains Alina, mother of a girl who studies at the center.
His daughter Sheyla returned to school today to greet her teacher. This Monday, he was walking through the streets of La Torre, but it took him several days to leave home for the first time after the flood that devastated his school. At first, he was scared, but he is feeling better. “I’m getting bored, but I’m coping well,” says Sheyla, who has already reunited with some classmates after the disaster.
From the first days after the tragedy, Sheyla, who is around six years old, remembers the work of the neighbors and the volunteers. He says that his mother gave one of them one of her bicycles, it was too small and they had it in a storage room to try to sell it on some second-hand application. She gave it to one of the people who helped Alina remove the mud from a storage room they have in a basement that was destroyed by the flood.
The centers least damaged by DANA began operating again this Monday. The Department of Education assures that 22,000 students have returned to classes after the break due to the flood and the damage caused by the catastrophe. The 47 schools that opened their doors today have already been disinfected, according to the Consell, to guarantee maximum safety for students and teachers.
From the union Stepv they question whether the figures provided by the Government of Carlos Mazón are true because they assure that they have visited some centers that had planned to open their doors in Catarroja and this Monday had not started operating. In addition, they ask the Consell that the cleaning of schools does not fall on volunteers, teachers and families, but rather that companies specialized in disinfection are in charge of that mission.
The Valencian Government has also set up shelter centers so that children and young people who have lost their home and have gone to live in another municipality, or those who studied in centers that will not be able to recover due to the damage suffered, can continue going to classes. Some families affected by this case and living in DANA ground zero are waiting to be provided with some type of school transportation because they have no possibility of accessing it.
Guarantee “the maximum possible normality”
“We have lost the two cars we had, how do you expect me to take the children to Valencia? I would have to travel a lot of kilometers,” says Javier, father of a child who is in fourth grade and another who is in first grade. His family lives in Benetúser and is waiting for the City Council to set up a pavilion or some facility so he can leave his children there these days because both he and his wife have to return to work.
Pablo José (12 years old) is waiting to return to his school this week. After the first days of DANA, he spent a few days in Picassent with his uncles, while his parents cleaned up the damage caused by the flood in La Torre. He had the option of staying in a host school in that municipality, but he rejected it. He hopes to return to class with his classmates in the next few days in Alfafar.
“I am used to my class and I felt strange,” explains Pablo José, while helping his parents clean the mud from some rags with a pressure water gun in the middle of the street. Organizations that defend the interest of minors ask administrations to allocate resources to analyze how this natural disaster has impacted boys and girls. Likewise, they explain that it is “crucial” that children are guaranteed “the maximum possible normality”, as Ricardo Ibarra, director of the Children’s Platform, told elDiario.es. For this reason, he insists that maintaining the same school groups and the usual socialization space for minors contributes to “relieving stress.”
The teachers are also concerned about the future of the young people who are studying the 2nd year of Baccalaureate this year and plan to take the Ebau exam this year. They have not taught classes for two weeks and are aware that reintegration in some cases will not be easy after the trauma and emotional consequences of a tragedy that has impacted their families and homes.
“They are not going to compete on equal terms with students from the rest of Spain or the entire community,” explains Cristina, a teacher at the María Carbonell i Sánchez de Benetúser institute. This center could not open this Monday either. Workers, teachers and volunteers continue removing mud from the ground floor. The damage caused by the floods can be seen on the wall, where there are traces of mud more than a meter and a half high; but they are also seen outside the center with fences and doors torn off. At the main entrance they had a built-in van that they have already managed to remove.
Unlike the pandemic, when secondary school students were able to re-engage in classes via the internet. This natural disaster has presented a totally different context. “We cannot start teaching online because there are many of these students who have lost everything. They have neither a home nor an online connection,” Cristina recalls.
At the door, two other teachers who are cleaning the center talk to a couple of students who have come up to greet them. They say that one of their classmates called one of the teachers after the flood to ask if the water had washed away the last exam they had taken two days before. The test had not gone very well and he hoped that at least the Dana would give him good news. But it wasn’t like that. The exam was saved from the catastrophe and is safe at its teacher’s house.
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