The teachers of IES Zonzamas have accused the Ministry of Education of the Canary Islands this Wednesday of proposing a "trap assignment" to the future IES Medina. The teachers have been demanding that the departure of students and teachers from IES Zonzamas, in order to create the FP center there, be carried out "en bloc" and Education announced this Tuesday that it would be so. However, it clarified that part of the teachers would teach "provisionally" at the IES Arrecife. For the assembly of teachers of Zonzamas, Education promises a "future in installments in which the continuity of an educational project will inevitably be lost".
As indicated this Tuesday by Education, the provisional solution they propose is that a part of the teaching staff of IES Zonzamas continue to teach their current students at IES Arrecife "until the reorganization of Mercedes Medina is completed (which will go from teaching Infant and Primary to being a Secondary and Baccalaureate center)", something that, they added, will not occur until the 2019-2020 academic year. For the teachers of Zonzamas, "this is not ensuring educational quality, this is increasing the ratios in the institutes of Arrecife with our students, since the future IES Mercedes Medina will never welcome these students".
The teachers point out that the general director of Personnel of the Government of the Canary Islands sent them this Tuesday in a meeting the response of the Vice-Ministry to the requests they expressed through the Faculty Board and the School Council. And those responses were received with "bewilderment", "since they do not satisfy our main and only demand: the non-disappearance of our educational community".
"We continue to state that the CEIP Mercedes Medina can become an IES with the capacity to welcome the educational community of IES Zonzamas, teachers and students, with a minimum economic investment within 18 months," they defend. Thus, they express their "rejection of the process of converting the CEIP Mercedes Medina into a complete IES in four years", as Education has communicated.
In its statement, the Ministry stated that it had opted for this solution "in order to satisfy as much as possible" the requests of both the teachers of Zonzamas and the parents of the CEIP Mercedes Medina. These, Education pointed out, requested the progressive transfer of Primary students to the new center, so that the boys and girls of the second cycle of Primary would complete that stage in their facilities.
"No data justifies this delay"
The teachers of Zonzamas consider, however, that Education has not "provided any objective data to justify this, for us, delay". "It is not understood that in this period the students of the current IES Zonzamas have to merge with the students of the IES Arrecife, to definitively not reach the IES Mercedes Medina. Therefore, they promise us a ‘trap’ assignment of teachers to this center, in a future in installments in which the continuity of an educational project will inevitably be lost", they argue.
On the other hand, the teachers are pleased with the delivery to the Ministry of 800 signatures collected by the students among the members of the educational community, "to express disagreement with this reorganization without consensus". It should be noted that the students of the center had also publicly criticized the way in which the reorganization of the educational centers of Arrecife has been programmed, asking for the construction of a new institute.
"Therefore, we reaffirm ourselves: ¡All together or nothing!", the teachers exclaim for their part. "We cannot project a new suit from tearing the present garments, that is called patching. Lanzarote does not deserve this improvisation, and even less in such a delicate matter as education, because that is precisely what we are talking about", they conclude.