HAVANA, Cuba.- Recent meetings that took place in the educational centers of Mayabeque before the resumption of the 2021-2022 school year leave parents disconcerted after points such as electricity, study materials and food were analyzed.
This September 5 almost two million students will return to the classroom, and it is customary for the official media to insist that “everything is guaranteed”, but reports from parents and from the study centers themselves show another reality.
“Everything they said at the round table is a lie, in the store of my children’s school there is only peas, salt and rice, and they are prohibited from children bringing a main course to improve lunch because they say you can’t break the uniformity”, told us a mother who identified herself as María de Jesús, whose son and daughter attend primary and secondary schools respectively.
“That uniformity thing is another way of saying that at school they don’t want social differences to exist, it can’t happen that a child brings an egg from home to accompany lunch and another has nothing,” he added.
On September 1, the Minister of Education, Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, and other directors of the sector recognized in the Round Table program that “the new school year will take place in a complex context”, however, they assured that the conditions for restart the course were created after “the authorities of the MINED (Ministry of Education) carried out the usual tour of all the provinces of the country.”
As a solution to power outages, Velázquez said that “there are facilities with classrooms that are not sufficiently ventilated or that are not favored by natural light. Therefore, it is an aspect to take into account to make rotations and use other locations in the center, “in addition, the official suggested that the television classes be moved to times that do not have a blackout.
In contrast, the directors of the schools in Mayabeque informed parents that they will not take action if students are absent from classes due to blackouts or due to lack of snacks. However, “it’s up to parents and students to catch up if they want to pass the systematic assessments.”
They also indicated that to start the course they only had pencils. Likewise, the insufficiency of uniforms for primary school students continues. Parents were warned that if they do not have the required clothing, they will not be able to wear shirts with “flashy signs, advertisements, or colors that are not in line with what is established.”
Finally, Mayabeque parents expressed concern due to the lack of bread for snacks in high school. This is designated to children’s circles, boarding schools and hospitals.
“We don’t know how we are going to give our children breakfast so they can study, not to mention the quality of the teachers, and to top it all off, the state does not guarantee the material base for study, but the indoctrination is guaranteed. The situation is desperate and it happens at all levels of education,” Susana Reyes, mother of a teenager, told us in an interview.
According to the MINED, the current school year will end on November 18 and the 2022-23 academic year will begin on the 28th of the same month, until July 2023. Thus, the 2023-24 school year will return to normal, from September to July.
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