The Department of Education of the Generalitat Valenciana explained this Wednesday that it has some 26,000 educational places to relocate the 24,000 students who have been left without school due to the floods resulting from DANA that the region suffered last week. A total of 92 centers have been affected by water to varying degrees, Education reported to the educational community in a meeting held this morning. However, the Ministry believes that the gradual opening of centers will reduce the number of people affected to 10,000 by next week and that 70% of children without school will have a place next week.
The idea of the department headed by José Antonio Rovira is to begin relocating students as soon as possible, although, according to several sources present at the meeting, it has not explained exactly how it will be done. Education has reported that it will send a circular towards the end of the week with the details of the operation.
One of the main problems faced by this massive movement of people – if not the most – is transportation: Education estimates that about 140 buses will be needed to establish school routes, but they are looking for vehicles because a good part of the school fleet – and in general – has been affected by the floods. Many families also lost their vehicles in the floods, so they could have problems traveling on their own.
It is also not clear at this time – Education is working on it – how the students will be distributed among the different centers. Today the only thing there is is a circular that establishes that families find a life: those who want it can request a place in a center, which will accept or not depending on availability. In this morning’s meeting the counselor did not specify whether there was a distribution plan, although he did mention that many secondary schools only have a morning shift, which could allow entire centers to be moved during the afternoon shift.
“We have insisted that all reception processes, both those of entire centers and those that are not, must make the maximum effort so that boys and girls go together and their socialization spaces are not destructured. They have made strange faces there because yes, it is difficult. But every effort must be made.
Unions and families present at the meeting have valued positively that finally – eight days later – the Department informed them first-hand, but they have regretted that many questions remain unanswered: where will the children go, how or what will happen to the dining rooms? schoolchildren. In this regard, Education maintains that displaced children will be able to enjoy them, although it has not responded to the AMPAS request to extend the dining scholarships to all affected minors, whether they previously had them or not.
They have also asked the counselor, explains Rubén Pacheco, president of the Confederacio de Ampas Gonzalo Anaya, for a communication effort for families, many of them isolated, and who do not have concrete information about what they should do with their children.
Javier González, from UGT, explained to this newspaper that they have also requested from the Ministry “special permits due to force majeure” for teachers who need to manage various issues related to human or material losses that they may have suffered.
12 centers closed the entire course
“A raid has been carried out with technicians and educational inspection to assess the situation of each educational center, and see which schools can open from now on, which will have to wait until Monday and which centers – it is estimated that a total of 12 – they could not, at first, recover teaching activity this year,” the Minister of Education, José Antonio Rovira, explained to the press.
The only thing that Education had so far offered to the affected families is the possibility that, managing it themselves, they could go to a center that is operational. But the Generalitat did not offer help in the form of transportation – many families have lost their vehicle – or management. It only opened the door for it to be done, to the indignation of the families.
“Understanding the difficulty of organizing something, it cannot be that there is no plan for the children,” lamented last Monday Rubén Pacheco, president of the AMPAS Gonzalo Anaya Confederation, the main family association in the region. “There should be an alternative that allows them to be removed from the quagmire they are in, which is mentally unhealthy, a mine. We know that even mere access [a algunos municipios] It is complicated, but the fact that there is no plan so that the children – who should be able to continue going to the centers – have an alternative is quite worrying,” he reflected.
Purchase of material
In addition, FAMPA València and Confederació de AMPAS Gonzalo Anaya have started a campaign to collect educational material. Pacheco explains that, in contact with the associations of Primary (ADEP-PV) and Secondary (ADIES) directors, a list of needs is being prepared center by center, to from there buy or ask “from all the organizations that are offering material” what is needed.
A current account has also been set up (ES07 3159 0073 2030 4890 6428) to help with this purchase of material and organize children’s and youth camps to get children out of the mud, “physically and emotionally.”
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