The mayor of Teguise, Oswaldo Betancort, has insisted on "the urgent need" to invest in a new Early Childhood and Primary Education Center in Costa Teguise, which is still not contemplated in the plans of the Ministry of Education. In fact, according to the City Council, the "only solution" that the Ministry has given to the educational community, in the face of the "mass congestion suffered by the current center", is to install "a new barrack" in the CEIP Costa Teguise.
The Consistory points out that this is what Education has conveyed to the teachers and parents of the center, once "the school year has concluded." Apparently, the Government assures that it is the "only possible way" to "avoid raising the ratio from 27 to 31 children per class", which is a possibility that has been "flatly rejected by the management of the center".
Faced with the possibility of creating a new barrack, the Consistory insists that the solution is to build a new school. And it emphasizes that the current one already "houses almost 800 children in prefabricated classrooms, far exceeding the optimal number of students according to the capacities of said school".
Asks that the land ceded for the nursery be used for the new school
In a statement, the Consistory recalls that "a few months ago" it ceded a municipal plot so that a nursery school could be projected, given the intention of the Ministry of Education to build said school for children from 0 to 5 years old in Costa Teguise. Now, the City Council asks the Government to make use of that municipal land to "build a school instead of a nursery school, which also responds to the forecast of growth of the child population in the coming years".
This was the message that the mayor and the head of the Education area of Teguise, Javier Díaz, conveyed to the island director of Education, Mario Pérez, in a meeting in which they defended the "urgency of seeking funding and commitment from the regional government to provide a definitive solution to an imperative need of the educational community".
In this sense, the mayor once again expressed his "concern and unease" because "Costa Teguise requires infrastructures that are up to the circumstances." In the case of the Costa Teguise school, he regrets that "despite the efforts of the management and teachers, and of the parents of students themselves, we have not received a firm commitment to improve the situation taking into account the increase in resident population that the town has experienced in recent years".
"The demands are more than fair"
"It is time for Costa Teguise to have two schools", said Oswaldo Betancort in his meeting with the island director of Education. "It is the only admissible and reasonable way to reduce the number of students per classroom, so we ask the Education area for a greater investment in educational infrastructures in Teguise, which involves the construction of new centers in addition to the renovation of existing ones", says the mayor, who states that they have also conveyed this message to the regional minister.
"From the Government team we believe that these demands are more than fair, both for the number of children who attend Infant and Primary school in Costa Teguise, and for the deficiencies and limitations they currently suffer in a building of prefabricated classrooms or barracks that undermine the quality of education", reiterates the mayor.
