Rosa Pérez Garijo, former Minister of Transparency of the Botànic Pact Government, has denounced an inspector from the Department of Education and the popular councilor of the Massanassa City Council María José Vázquez for an alleged crime of prevarication. The former councilor considers that the obstacles to schooling in Massanassa for her two daughters, residents of Catarroja (one of the towns affected by DANA) represent discrimination in the right of adolescents to schooling.
The family of Pérez Garijo, coordinator of Esquerra Unida del País Valencià, experienced the catastrophic DANA on October 29 in the Horta Sud region. The Catarroja high school where his two daughters, aged 14, are in their third year of ESO, was completely destroyed by the ravine; Currently “it is not in operation nor will it be for a long time,” recalls Rosa Pérez Garijo. “Students are currently limited to receiving weekly tutoring per subject via videoconference, that is, they do not have classes. In addition, the connection often fails. This quarter they have not even received grades,” is the complaint to which this newspaper has had access.
On November 26, the former councilor requested provisional school placement for her two daughters at the IES in Massanassa, a town a stone’s throw from Catarroja where her partner maintains his work address. “Since it is impossible to receive teaching at the corresponding institute at the family home, we opted for the institute at the work home, since both homes are at the same level in the admission process,” he explains. However, he received “no response.”
Two days later, on November 28, he presented by registration to the Massanassa City Council, governed by the popular Paco Comes, a request for stable enrollment to the municipality’s schooling commission, in which “there are vacancies,” according to the complaint. The council responded days later that it was pending the decision of the educational inspector.
Thus, on December 3 he requested an appointment with the inspector, who telephoned him six days later. “He explained to me very kindly that he could not approve the admission because there are no regulations on this issue and that it would violate the rights of other people, although at that time there were no more applications for schooling submitted in a timely manner. He made it quite clear to me that in no way was he going to accept the enrollment of my daughters at the IES of Massanassa,” the complaint relates.
Pérez Garijo alleges that the regional regulations governing the admission process include schooling outside the ordinary admission procedure for urgent or special reasons. “I think it is more than evident that there are ample special and urgent reasons to proceed with the schooling of minors,” says the former counselor, who also adds: “I submitted the request in accordance with the regulations and I understand that the current situation we are in suffering cannot serve to justify the non-application of the norm, it would have to be rather the opposite.”
The complaint recalls that similar processes have been carried out in “numerous institutes that have had no problem accepting students who cannot return to their educational center due to exceptional causes attributable to DANA”, in towns such as València, Mislata, Torrent, Silla or Sedaví, who “have admitted students from the IES Berenguer Dalmau in Catarroja.” “It is not understood that admission is not granted to the IES of Massanassa, which is an institute, furthermore, with vacancies, thus producing a comparative grievance in a case of two minors who, under normal conditions, would access this center because it is the one located at the paternal work address,” he adds.
The former counselor of the Pacte del Botànic affirms that the constitutional right to education “is not being fulfilled” in the case of her daughters, “who at this time have been at home without schooling for more than two months, the ministry not taking into account the interest superior of the minor ones, also carrying out a restrictive interpretation of the rule in a specific area that is totally contrary to the rest of the areas, which represents unjustified discretion.
Rosa Pérez Garijo explains that, after not having obtained “any formal response” from the Massanassa City Council regarding the request, she sent two emails to the inspection and to the territorial management of the department headed by the popular José Antonio Rovira, organizations of which He has not had a response either.
“But if this situation already constituted a violation of the regulations, the events that occurred later are more serious,” he warns. On December 12, after a meeting of the municipal schooling commission, in a “chance meeting,” Pérez Garijo asked the Councilor for Education of Massanassa, María Jose Vázquez, about his request, who informed him that, together with the educational inspector, had decided “to offer the vacant places at the Massanassa IES, but they had sought a legal way to limit those places to boys and girls with a family home,” which clearly constitutes a decision ad hoc that limits “the right of their daughters,” in addition to not taking into account the request for schooling made in a timely manner.
“There is no rule either in force or recently repealed from the Department of Education that differentiates between family and work domicile, they are always at the same legal level,” the complaint recalls.
With this panorama, the former Minister of Transparency sent a batch of emails to the Education Department of the Massanassa City Council, to the mayor himself, to the inspection, to the territorial management and to the regional secretariat of the department. The only response, on December 19, was from the General Inspection of Education, which informed him that it had notified his writings to the Territorial Inspection of Valencia.
It also notified him of the agreement of the Massanassa town council, dated December 12, which opened a reservation period for resident students who need to attend school in the municipality until January 15, the date on which the Schooling Commission will meet again and thus decide whether to end the reservation of places for local students.”
The decision “clearly violates the regulations”
“It is obvious,” says Pérez Garijo, that the decision of the Massanassa Schooling Commission “clearly violates the regulations and that this regulation is also made knowing that I have requested the schooling of my daughters.”
Rosa Pérez Garijo considers that the situation is also due to her political career. “This arbitrariness can be better understood if we take into account my responsibilities in the previous Valencian Government, for four years I was the Minister of Participation, Transparency, Cooperation and Democratic Quality of the Generalitat Valenciana, previously I had been a provincial deputy for eight years and a councilor of Catarroja for sixteen.” Her political resume and her “disagreements” with the current autonomous government of Carlos Mazón “are public and notorious,” recalls the former councilor.
Pérez Garijo maintains that there has been a “double violation of the regulations.” “First of all,” he details, “because the request for schooling was submitted in a timely manner, there is an absence of response, while in the rest of the institutes in the area, schooling has been facilitated for the students of the Berenguer Dalmau Institute in Catarroja de quickly and without problems.”
“And secondly,” the complaint adds, “because after informing the schooling commission from the Education Department of the Massanassa City Council that there was only one request for schooling presented by entry registration, two non-resident minor sisters, but with a working father in Massanassa, that is, my request, and two families residing in Massanassa who had asked orally, the educational inspector and the Councilor for Education, who chaired the meeting, decided to propose the opening of a period for only students residing in Massanassa, an agreement that, as I have previously stated, violates all regional and state regulations that clearly place the priority of schooling by family or work address (whether one of the parents works in the municipality) without distinguishing or prioritizing between the two.”
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