On January 27, it is as if lightning had fallen on the Françoise-Dolto college, in Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis). The day after the sector’s mobilization day, the educational team learned that morning that the allocation of the Departmental National Education Services Directorate (DSDEN) for the start of the September 2021 school year would result in the closure of … four classes . Either one per section, from 6th to 3rd – or, to put it another way, more than one class in six in this establishment which has 23. Faced with this threat, neither one nor two, the teachers go on strike . To justify this clear cut, the DSDEN explains that, according to its forecasts, the college should suffer a drop in its enrollment of around 40 students. Which is a little over a class and a half, not four. Teachers and parents of students made their calculations: “We would go from 26 to 28.5 students per class on average, explains Hanaine Ben Hadj, president of the local FCPE, t in addition, as the college is not classified REP, nothing prevents them from going up to 30 per class! “
The strike continues, in “pearl strike” mode
Anyway, another problem arises: in this old college, many rooms simply do not have the capacity to accommodate so many students. This is particularly the case of science rooms where, indicates a letter written by the teachers for the attention of the authorities, “Adding tables would entail risks during handling”. And then under these conditions, adds Hanaine Ben Hadj, “How will we be able to respect barrier gestures”, if the Covid-19 is still present at the start of the school year? The college also has a pedagogical unit for incoming allophone students (UPE2A): not only these numbers, not taken into account to calculate the establishment’s hourly allocation, will be added to the other students in the classes, but the conditions of the next school year may jeopardize the reception and follow-up they need. Parents and teachers, hand in hand (with the Snes-FSU and SUD education unions), therefore took the academic bull by the horns: received on February 2 at the DSDEN, “We had the impression that our children were just numbers”, indignant Hanaine Ben Hadj. The strike resumed and continued, in “pearl strike” mode. On Friday 5, the parents demonstrated and blocked the college, then were received at the town hall; Monday 8, they received the support of Stéphane Troussel, the president of the department – they already had that of the deputy Clémentine Autain. All plan to organize the boycott of the board of directors, scheduled for Thursday, February 11. “We will not let go”, warns Hanaine Ben Hadj. O. C.
