Miserable: “Schools” of Abdo, without a roof and with plywood walls

• Middle Nation Investigation Unit

The San Antonio School in the Chaco’i district is a small school that barely has three very old classrooms, in precarious conditions to house students from preschool to ninth grade.

A shed built a few years ago complements the infrastructure and inside this the teachers together with their students improvised a humble perimeter with plywood to use as a classroom and basically shelter from the sun.

The little school has several cracks in its walls, the ceiling has several flaws, the electrical part implies a danger due to the entanglement of cables, fluorescent tubes hanging from spider webs, etc. The entire structure is at risk.

A thick sandbank in the middle of a plywood fence serves as a classroom for the eighth and ninth graders who barely cover them from the sun’s rays. The modest furniture translates into a blackboard and battered desks.

“We are out in the open, exposed to dust, smoke, wind, cold. We need classrooms yes or yes, those woods are not protections, they are more than anything so that (students) do not have many distractions, because they do not block the wind. The north wind comes and raises the dust from the very ground where they are and it becomes unsustainable”, lamented the director of the school, Celsa Gamarra.

“When it rains, parents usually don’t send their children to school afterwards,” said Gamarra when asked what happens to the children on rainy days.

At least three more classrooms are required, in addition to a space for early childhood, to provide basic coverage for school demand in the area, but this is far from being a reality, judging by the number of times that the claims.

Another need expressed by the principal is the provision of school lunch. “We receive the school snack, but the children also need lunch, it is something that we are also requesting since the families in this area are poor and all that helps,” said Gamarra.

Likewise, in the midst of the technological and digital era, the San Antonio School is one of the many educational institutions to which they brought Wi-Fi equipment, but the Internet network so promised by the State does not arrive.

The San Antonio School operates within a property that the Archbishopric donated to the community many years ago for the opening of the educational center.

The pretext of the Ministry of Education is that the title of the property passed to the portfolio only in August of this year, however for the private initiative this was not an impediment to contribute some works such as the shed that graphs this article.