The Los Cristianos Secondary Education Institute (IES), in Arona (south of Tenerife), has experienced two years plagued by labor conflict that has ended with the departure of more than fifty teachers with a permanent position at the center, a total of 78 dismissals labor and the temporary suspension of the director of the institute, Samira Tela, by order of the General Directorate of Personnel and Teacher Training of the Government of the Canary Islands, as this newspaper has learned.
At the end of August, this governing body, attached to the Education Department of the regional Executive, agreed to initiate a disciplinary procedure against Tela after becoming aware of “a series of incidents” that occurred at the IES Los Cristianos in the 22/23 and 23 courses. /24 in which she was director of the center. With the opening of the file, it was also determined to provisionally suspend her from her duties.
The aforementioned general management indicates that Tela could have committed two very serious disciplinary offenses, these are, moral harassment and obstruction of the exercise of public freedoms and union rights, and two other serious offenses, abuse of authority in the exercise of the position and serious inconsideration of superiors, colleagues or subordinates.
Tela, for his part, defends in statements to Canary Islands Now that the facts of which he is accused “are not true” and that “this will be proven in the appropriate judicial instance.” Sources from the Ministry of Education add that the precautionary measure of suspension was appealed twice and that on both occasions it was maintained, on the second of them, even with a report from the instructor. These same sources detail that since 2020, one hundred disciplinary proceedings have been initiated against teaching staff in the Canary Islands, but only 14 have in turn proceeded with the suspension of functions as a precautionary measure.
The decision to file charges against the director of this public institute came directly from the General Directorate of Personnel and Teacher Training based on “various writings” that were entered in its record criticizing Tela’s management and its treatment of colleagues and students.
The decree that regulates the operation of the Ministry of Education allows higher bodies to make these types of decisions. In this case, there is no mention of previous reports from the educational inspection that motivated the opening of the file. The instruction phase is being carried out by inspectors.
Among the writings collected, some of them seen by this editorial team, it is reported that Tela has had “confrontations with several teachers that lead to a situation of medical leave for the rest of the school year,” alluding to “alleged cases of harassment and bad manners.” ”.
A teacher who worked at the IES Los Cristianos and who agrees to speak anonymously explains that Tela underwent a “tremendous change of attitude” the moment she became the director of the center “despite the fact that she had already been” for many years. previous management team as secretary and had more than two decades of experience at the institute, as reported by the school newspaper itself.
This source states that Tela “took the institute as if it were her private farm” and that “her attitude was very hostile towards all the teachers.” He adds that “it didn’t matter if he was a professor, non-teaching staff, administration people…”, the people who entered his office “literally came out crying.” “She said that not working was over. (…) A fear began to set in of being called out in public, of being exposed,” he continues.
Another teacher who also prefers not to reveal her identity maintains that the experience of working with Tela was “disastrous” and that she had a medical leave that was “very long due to the tension” she suffered. A teacher, on the other hand, asserts that the principal entered his class and asked the students to convey their “complaints” to him with the intention of “taking away his authority.” He says that after that he ran out of the institute in tears, and did not return.
“I cannot teach with fear,” he wrote in a letter. “There is mistrust and people are choosing to pass or leave the center. Mentally I can’t take it anymore. I have asked for leave, but as a teacher at the institute to be able to rebuild my life in another autonomous community,” he added.
The General Directorate of Personnel and Teacher Training has recorded that, of a total of 56 career civil servants permanently assigned to the center in the 22/23 academic year, 41 teachers decided to leave. That year, of the 103 teachers with a provisional assignment, 46 also asked to change institutes. In addition, there were four voluntary retirements and one resignation, also voluntary.
The following year, teacher departure data decreases, but remains high. Of a total of 39 officials permanently assigned to the IES Los Cristianos, eighteen left. There were also 64 temporary teachers with the right to extension, but fourteen preferred not to continue. In both courses there were 78 sick leave, at least eighteen of them lasting at least one hundred days. Currently, the center has 98 teachers and almost a thousand students.
Although the precautionary measure of suspension has only been taken in three of the thirty disciplinary procedures opened against teaching staff in 2024, the aforementioned general direction justifies the decision in this case “given the seriousness of the facts that are attributed” to Tela. , of which “not only the center staff, but also minor students” may have allegedly been victims.
These incidents date back to September 21, 2023. That day, Tela went to speak with the Rescue and First Aid Sports Teaching class and asked them to “sign a blank sheet of paper, coercing them to remain on the morning shift and not on the afternoon one,” according to a writing from a mother of one of the students.
The students refused to sign it, the document continues, but that is when “the [un] confrontation” between them and the director who killed one of the students in the latter’s office. He was there from 2:30 p.m. to 4:17 p.m., according to another text in the possession of the Ministry of Education, “not allowing him to leave” until “signing a document that the minor did not want due to the threat of expulsion from the center for 10 days”
The teacher of that school group stated in a letter that Tela had “broke into both the classrooms and the pool, raising his voice and addressing the students and teachers inappropriately.” He also said that the director came one day to the classroom where he was teaching, gave him documentation and later decided to stay in the room, interrupting with phrases such as “you are making up what you are doing” and “the teachers of the cycles of “Sports teachers work fewer hours than the rest of the teachers and I am not going to allow that.”
That teacher reported that since the course began, both he and the students had been “suffering continuous disrespect” and that he found himself “in such a state of nervousness and anxiety” that he had to go to the emergency room, where he was told that “ “A leave due to temporary disability would be advisable.” He sent that letter to the Territorial Directorate of Education of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Two of the sources consulted reiterate that IES Los Cristianos was a family center, with a “very stable” faculty. One of the sources assures that he had been working at the institute for fourteen years despite living in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, so it took him almost an hour to get there by car. The previous director of the center, Rafael del Cristo, obtained in March 2023 a Viera y Clavijo distinction from the Government of the Canary Islands for their “career, dedication and pedagogical innovation”.
The disciplinary procedure against Tela continues in the investigation phase. The provisional suspension agreed at the end of August has a maximum duration of six months.
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