This Tuesday, classes resumed in Valencian schools located in areas not affected by the catastrophic DANA registered a week ago. However, there are still many to reopenlocated in the areas affected by the flood. The Conselleria d’Educació reported this Tuesday that The 92 centers in the damaged municipalities have already been reviewed and he assures that “24 are ready to open”. For the students who still cannot return to the classrooms, the Generalitat this Sunday transferred a circular in which it “exceptionally authorizes” public preschool and primary schools to “accept students from affected areas.” But families have expressed that they have “many doubts” about this provisional plan, such as about transportation or dining service, as well as about the ratios that will result from transferring students or the offer of extracurricular activities.
The CEIP Castellar l’Oliveral, in the Castellar-Oliveral district south of Valencia, has been the first school to resume classes within the areas affected by DANA. As reported by the Valencia City Council this morning, this Tuesday it was able to reopen to once again welcome its 400 Infant and Primary children after the relevant verification by the technicians and firefighters. However, many children remain in their homes, most of them also full of mud from the floods. “The need is enormous in the affected educational centers. In most cases, DANA has devastated absolutely everything“, explains to 20 minutes Rubén Pacheco, president of FAMPA-València, which brings together 600 associations of mothers and fathers of students in the province.
According to the Generalitat, Education technicians have already reviewed the 92 centers in twenty localities affected by DANA and have determined that 24 are ready to open. Likewise, “other 29 centers have a high probability of opening their doors next Monday” and another 19, although there are no problems in the classrooms, “need fencing, carpentry or electrical replacement interventions, so it will be necessary to carry out some works that prevent opening next week.”
After the technical evaluation completed this Tuesday by the Generalitat technicians, the centers in which the need for a replacement, comprehensive rehabilitation or major repairs amount to 12. Finally, there are nine other centers that have already been visited but are still in the evaluation stage.
In many centers, the damage is structural and the educational community does not yet know how long it will take to recover normality. At best they talk about “months.” From FAMPA-València, Pacheco reports that even in many two-story centers, although the upper height has not been flooded, on the ground floor the power of the damage “has knocked down walls and torn down fences”, so “There are structures that are also seriously affected“. This is the case, among others, of the CEIP Orba in Alfafar, where the cars have even ended up inside classrooms after bursting the walls of the center’s ground floor (photos above).
According to the count prepared by the Generalitat, they are 22 municipalities have reported that they will not be able to provide educational services throughout this week, while others have moved specific closures. “The Department of Education, Culture, Universities and Employment is evaluating the necessary measures to resume the educational service in the areas affected by DANA as soon as possible. In this sense, the technical services of the general directorate of Educational Infrastructures and the inspection are already visiting the centers in the affected area to check the availability of teaching classes in the coming days and weeks“says the circular issued this Sunday.
The Education circular also states that during the week of November 4 to 8, public Early Childhood and Primary Education centers are exceptionally authorized to welcome students from the affected areas. “This placement must be requested at the reception center by the fathers, mothers or legal representatives” by filling out a form.. Regarding ESO, Baccalaureate and Vocational Training students who are unable to travel to their educational center, “they will receive the necessary academic and training adaptations, resources and flexibility in the evaluations that are required to guarantee the continuity of the teaching and learning process“.
However, for families there are many doubts that persist regarding school transportation, the dining room service, extracurricular services, the ratios or the options themselves for carrying out the foster care application procedures at a time like the current one. Pacheco denounces that “the majority of the affected families are incommunicado, many have lost their computers and/or cell phones – or these are not yet in condition – and they will not be able to receive that information in any way. Perhaps through the media But, even so, we still have a very wide margin of loss of communication.” Pacheco asks to “properly inform” the families, while expressing the concern of the families about school transportation, since many have lost their cars and the roads have restrictions, and they need a “round trip, public and free” transfer. .
He dining room It is another matter that worries to families: “Nor does the circular say it. And this is absolutely and radically fundamental.” The Ministry has communicated so far that “it is working on the assessment of complementary dining and school transportation services in the province of Valencia and looking for alternative solutions.” Regarding the dining room, “the management of the centers will take the appropriate measures”, while regarding the transport routes, “they are subject to the state of the access roads and the impact of the vehicles” and “the centers will be informed of the possible incidents, as well as the eventual creation of new routes to serve students who should be transferred to other centers”.
The families have also requested to relocate the schoolchildren in classrooms “of the same level”. Furthermore, they wonder what conditions they will be in and whether more teachers or co-teaching systems will be provided to take on the increase in students. They also ask to facilitate extracurricular so that they do not have to spend so much time in the “quagmire” that is their homes and neighborhoods at this time. “These boys and girls have been in psychological conditions for a week that are not adequate and they must be given specific attention. Their Homes are razed in streets that are still covered in mudthey are a real quagmire, full of rubble, putrid matter, with unbearable odors and in psychological conditions that are not appropriate,” laments the representative of the families, who reproaches the Generalitat for “ineffective” communication so farwith initiatives that seem “a response of a bureaucratic and administrative nature that does not really address the current specific need. It addresses a part, but leaves so many gaps and so many doubts that it falls very short.”
The situation of the teaching staff
On the part of the teachers, from the CCOO-PV union, the person responsible for non-university public education, Rafa Martínez, emphasizes that they are receiving “many questions and doubts” from teachers who cannot go to their workplaces because they are cleaning their houses and neighborhoods, or because the centers where they work are destroyed by the flood. These professionals who have lost their jobs, where are they going to work now? From the union they criticize the lack of “precise instructions on what should be done” by the Department, which until this Wednesday has not called them to a meeting with the educational community to coordinate the emergency response to those affected by DANA .
The effects on the centers “are very varied”, from structural damage to a lack of teachers who cannot travel. “The teachers consult us a lot about the situations in which they can ask for a kind of exemption or permission to not have to go to the center if they have family members to care for, or they cannot travel, or they have to care for their children, who have stayed without school,” says Martínez.
Although the light at the end of the tunnel seems far away today, it will come. For the educational community, “it should arrive in months” and not in years, but everything will depend on “the capacity of the public Administration to expedite the intervention, reconstruction and rehabilitation processes of the centers.”
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