teachers from the Buenos Aires neighborhood 21-24 denounced an “absent” State before the death of an 11-year-old student from school 11, school district 5, of the City of Buenos Aires, which occurred this Monday at the Penna Hospital.
“It was six years that passed in our school. Six years in which the State was absent, in which the attempts to intervene in the face of so much vulnerability and injustice were only hindered”teachers said in a statement.
They added that the family presented a medical certificate in 2021, which indicated the need for a hypercaloric food booster for the girl, but that to date there has been no intervention from the Zonal Ombudsman of the CABA Ministry of Education.
The teachers stated that Last Friday, the girl arrived at school, became unbalanced, and was picked up by her parents after an hour, as a result of the fact that the SAME never arrived at the place to assist her.
Last Monday, they added, the girl re-entered the Penna Hospital ward, affected by the same condition, but “died a few hours later.”
For its part, spokesmen for the Buenos Aires Ministry of Education told Télam that “today the supervisor approached the school and tomorrow the support groups that generally appear on these occasions will go to support the educational community of the school”.
They added that it is “a very delicate case and it is under investigation, so we do not know what the teachers are saying, but it is a very delicate case and we still have to wait for the results of the little girl’s autopsy, so No details of death can be given.”
Ailén Galante, a teacher at school 11, told Télam that educators “are tired of the situation” and blames the city government for “defunding education” and for looking “the other way to the problems of the neighborhood’s residents”.
The teacher specified that “laziness in educational matters in the neighborhood by the Buenos Aires government increased even more after the pandemic, when the quality of food fell.”
He added that “since 2020, the city government has not distributed yogurt. In addition to the fact that the milk ration given to the students was reduced to half a glass with two vanilla pods and that the bags of food were replaced with a ham and cheese sandwich and a fruit”.
In this sense, he remarked that “the boys seek to eat real food” and that “there are places where we can no longer reach”.
The teacher stressed that the process of definancing in educational matters also impacts the containment area, due to the disappearance of the neighborhood’s psycho-pedagogical cabinet.
“There are kids who can’t receive food because the city’s Ministry of Education requires them to sign up for a page. The truth is we’re talking about extremely vulnerable kids and that many of us are starving to death,” the teacher remarked.
Likewise, he stressed that in order to remedy these problems in terms of food provision, teachers “work in cooperation with some neighborhood kitchens.”
“We want justice for the girl, we want education not to be defunded, we demand an improvement in comprehensive health in the neighborhood, more staff for the neighborhood saloons and that the SAME can enter the neighborhood,” concluded the teacher.
For his part, Pablo Francisco, secretary of Labor Conditions and Environment, CYMAT, UTE, CTERA, told Télam that “for ten years we have been pointing out for a long time that there is a gap in the protection system for children and adolescents” .
“We need to expand the school orientation teams and more staff for the school lawyer guard and there are fewer and fewer workers in the area,” he warned.
In relation to medical coverage in the vulnerable neighborhoods of CABA, he remarked that “it is very frequent that SAME does not appear in vulnerable neighborhoods, because it is not enough” and added that “there are no answers from the city government”.
