Photos: Sergio Betancort
Some students, less than a hundred, from the IES de San Bartolomé, have protested this Friday, May 16, at the educational center facilities, due to the conflict that has existed for more than a year between the teachers and the Ministry of Education regarding salary standardization. They regret being directly affected by the teachers' strikes and do not want to be used as a "weapon" in the conflict. The teachers, in turn, have also hung their own banner on the main facade of the center that read "standardization without compensation".
After the first three hours of class in the morning, some students from the IES San Bartolomé went out to the center's courts, banners in hand, to ask that the demands regarding the salary standardization of teachers be resolved without directly harming them in the normal academic development through dialogue.
The teachers of the center, for their part, have also hung a banner on the main facade of the institute in which they demand that the Ministry of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands, without compensation, equalize the salaries of teachers with those of the same category of officials in the Autonomous Community.
The day of demonstration began around 10:45 a.m., the moment of the start of recess, and was later extended to the area adjacent to the center's parking lot where the students had called a sit-in during the last three hours of class. They ask for dialogue between the parties, they explain, because "it is enough that those who always tell us that problems have to be solved by talking, do not set an example of what they preach," the young people explain. And they claim their rights as students because "we do not want to continue being always affected by the disagreements between the teaching staff and the Ministry".
The strike initiative, which was born at the proposal of the 2nd A ESO students and was put to a vote by the delegates of each class to all the students of the center, was approved by an absolute majority with 404 votes in favor, 27 against and four abstentions last Tuesday, May 13.
