On the afternoon of yesterday, Tuesday, we held a meeting between the Ministry of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands, the Arrecife City Council and the educational communities of the still Zonzamas Secondary Education Institute and the still Los Geranios and Mercedes Medina Infant and Primary Education Schools.
The purpose of the meeting was to update the process by which the institute will become an Integrated Vocational Training Center exclusively, Los Geranios will remain as a center for students between three and 12 years old thanks to an expansion work and Mercedes Medina will become a Secondary and Baccalaureate Institute.
A reorganization of the educational map of the capital that we hope will be positive for our students, by maintaining the places for children, primary and secondary schools and expanding those for vocational training, so necessary and demanded today.
The meeting was intense because it opened with the bad news that the works for the construction of the eight multipurpose classrooms, dining room and kitchen of Los Geranios were going to be delayed due to the previous procedures and the new facilities would not be operational for the next course.
As in similar cases, the use of modular classrooms was presented as the only option. Either temporary barracks or division of the teaching communities or paralysis for one year of the new distribution of teachings.
And at this point comes the reason that has encouraged me to write these words, the lesson of generosity offered by the educational community of the Los Geranios school. Its director, Jesús Toledano, faced with the possibility of being forced to move part of the students to the prefabricated classrooms, decided without thinking twice that the common spaces, teachers' room, laboratory, assembly hall or library, were the ones that had a new location.
The renunciation of their own space, the concern for young students and their well-being, the immediate, intelligent, sensitive decision, alien to visceral lynching in a crisis situation and the commitment to the quality of the educational offer acquired yesterday a proper name, Jesús Toledano.
And along with this recognition, I also extend my enormous gratitude to the teachers and families of the three centers, who embraced the proposal and have shown patience, dedication and empathy with the Administrations from the beginning.
Thank you very much and at your entire disposal.
Eva de Anta, Mayoress of Arrecife
