In December 2015, the Chamber of Commerce of Lanzarote addressed the Ministry of Education, the Cabildo of Lanzarote, and the Arrecife City Council, requesting the need to establish the Integrated FP Center at the IES Zonzamas. From that moment on, the Ministry of Education and the Arrecife City Council began their missteps, turning a deaf ear to the claims of the Federation of AMPAS of Lanzarote, despite the rallies and demonstrations they carried out to assert their rights, which were being diminished.
From that date, the Arrecife City Council completely disregarded the future situation of the three centers involved, and the Ministry of Education made unfortunate interventions in the days leading up to the start of enrollment for the 2016/2017 school year. On the one hand, it gave the Zonzamas community one year to move to the Mercedes Medina School, and on the other hand, it offered the latter up to four years to become an IES. Faced with such a blatant contradiction, it is the teachers of the IES Zonzamas themselves who provide solutions to equalize the times of both communities, and at the end of last year and "reluctantly", the Ministry accepted. All this in the face of the impassivity of the Arrecife City Council, which did not consider itself alluded to at any time with a shameful silence.
Just one year later, we see that the City Council has been unable to resolve the expansion of the 8 Primary Education classrooms in Los Geranios to accommodate students from Mercedes Medina; which in turn will house the ESO students from Zonzamas who will have to leave immediately so that the latter can finally become an Integrated Vocational Training Center. A mess for students, parents and teachers.
The Arrecife City Council's lack of concern, coupled with the Ministry of Education's "blunders", has led to the announcement in the middle of the school year and in the preamble to the new enrollment period that they will have to resort to placing barracks in the Los Geranios School. Of course, they use the school's management as a shield to renounce the common areas of the Library, Teachers' Room, Laboratory and Computer room, among other facilities. The objective: to reassure parents and place barracks to house these spaces. The Director's action is to be commended, but we would not have reached this situation if the current Government group of Arrecife PSOE-CC-PIL had done their homework. The Popular Party was not wrong when it said in the plenary session held in April 2016 that they would finally place barracks in the Los Geranios School. Many denied it, but time has sadly proved us right.
What is certain is that on September 1 there will be breaches due to the ineffectiveness of the Arrecife City Council, which once again has given an image of incapacity; a regrettable image of improvisation, counting, yes, and at all times, with the complicity of the Ministry of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands. A ministry that in 2017 has again refused to allocate a budget item for the construction of the IES of Maneje, which, if it were in operation, would have solved the transfers of students to the different schools and IES of Arrecife.
Again, the Government group of Arrecife, PSOE-CC-PIL, reveals its inability to manage Education in the municipality, generating confusion in the educational units and turning its back on the Federation of AMPAS. First it was the La Destila School and now, by a government that does not know where it is or where it wants to go, we will also have barracks in the Los Geranios School.
Jacobo Medina, councilor and deputy spokesman for the Popular Group in the Arrecife City Council
