This Friday, June 28, at around 8:20 a.m., they made themselves heard in the rue des Ayres in Bordeaux. With pots and pans, whistles and banners, parents of students and children from the Paul-Bert elementary school went on “strike” to protest against a planned class closure…
This Friday, June 28, around 8:20 a.m., they were heard in rue des Ayres in Bordeaux. With pots, whistles and banners, parents and children of Paul-Bert elementary school went on “strike” to protest against a class closure planned for the start of the school year in September, two years after another closure .
They gathered in front of the school, at the initiative of the parents’ delegates, in the presence of the deputy Nicolas Thierry, the deputy mayor of Bordeaux in charge of education Sylvie Schmitt, the neighborhood mayor Nadia Saadi and Gironde senator Monique de Marco.
“This closure, which will result in the departure of a teacher, is inconsistent, especially since we will go from 174 to 178 students next year. We will have to distribute all these students among the seven remaining classes,” complains a parent representative. “The school has already refused three students for the start of the school year. This means that people in the neighborhood cannot even register their child in the local school. There is a financial logic that we do not understand.”
Commission in July
On site, elected officials were concerned about closures which now affect the city center of the metropolis, whereas they mainly concerned the outskirts or rural areas. According to Emmanuelle Clavet, the teacher affected by the job elimination, “the eight-class format which allowed us to have between 25 and 26 students per class this year helped to improve the cohesion of the children and to bring projects to fruition. With almost 30 students per class at the start of the school year, it will no longer be the same,” she regrets.
The parents of students deplore the lack of dialogue and listening from the rectorate. They also point out that it is necessary to “save this class because the Paul-Bert school is one of the few schools in France to offer a Spanish international section, with Spanish-speaking or allophone students”. They hope to put pressure on before a committee on July 11 that can still “reassign the position eliminated at the Paul-Bert school”.
