The Sentirte association, created for the defense of the rights of autistic people and their families in Lanzarote, has publicly denounced the case of a student with autism enrolled in a key classroom who was excluded from the school canteen service “from one day to the next” due to a lack of auxiliary support staff outside school hours.
This entity has described the situation as “serious, unjust and deeply discriminatory”. As it has reported, the case has occurred in the Ajei school in the municipality of San Bartolomé. The minor, whose father holds full custody, depends exclusively on this resource to be able to reconcile the care of his son with his working day, as he does not have other support alternatives.
However, despite having used the dining room normally during the course, the center has informed the family, "without room for reaction or an alternative solution, that as of tomorrow he/she will not be able to continue in the ordinary service and must adhere to using the dining service within school hours, as established by the Ministry for students in the key classroom, without being able to use late pickup".
Points to Education for the lack of educational assistants
From Sentirte they have stressed that what happened "does not respond to a specific or exceptional decision, but to a reality that the Department of Education itself has known for a long time and has not corrected." The association has denounced the lack of educational assistants in the early reception and late pick-up slots. "This structural deficiency prevents guaranteeing adequate attention to minors with specific needs and ends up translating, as in this case, into their effective exclusion from essential services," it added.
Sentirte has pointed out “that the response given to the family from the center is ‘this is not a daycare’ demonstrates to what extent the system is failing in the most basic aspect: understanding that public education must also guarantee inclusion and reconciliation.”
“Responsibility cannot continue to be shifted to the centers. When there is no staff, when there are no resources, and when this is repeated, we are facing a system problem that has clear culprits. Families cannot depend on the discretion of the management teams,” they denounce from the association.
The coordinator of Sentirte, Saula Rodríguez, has been forceful: “we are not facing an isolated case, we are facing a situation that is repeated because the necessary means have not been put in place. Access to a basic public resource is being conditioned by the lack of personnel, and that is discrimination in its purest form”.
The association warns that this situation violates not only the right to inclusive education, but also the right to reconciliation, leaving families completely exposed given the lack of response from the administration.
Demands immediate action
Therefore, Sentirte demands that the Ministry of Education assume its responsibility and act immediately, guaranteeing the presence of educational assistants in all necessary time slots, including early reception, and preventing these types of situations from continuing to occur. “Inclusion cannot be a discourse. If it is not guaranteed in all spaces and schedules of the educational center, what exists is exclusion,” they concluded from the association.