The Escuelas Normales Superiores de Lenguas Vivas Sofía Esther Broquen de Spangenberg and Mariano Acosta, from the City of Buenos Aires, remained this Monday morning taken over by students demanding improvements in food and against mandatory and unpaid labor practices in private companies and public agencies, reported from the Student Centers of the institutions.
Students from the Spangenberg school, known as “Lengüitas”, began the takeover of the institution at 10, while a group of parents remained at the door to “assist the boys and girls and protect them,” Yamila Bravio told Télam , mother of a third-year student.
Among the main claims, the male and female students affirm that “you cannot study when you are hungry”, they demand that the project of “Comprehensive Law on the Right to Adequate Food in Educational Institutions” and they ask that “providing decent food for all our students” begin immediately, according to the student center in a statement
They also support the slogan “No to the Acap (Activities to bring people closer to the world of work and to higher education)”, which consist of Compulsory labor internships for students of the last secondary level of the City of Buenos Aires.
“We believe it is inadmissible that we are denied the right to education by losing irrecoverable hours of class and that we are put at risk by not being accompanied by responsible teachers to practices,” they added in the text.
“We believe it is inadmissible that we are denied the right to education by losing irrecoverable hours of class and that we are put at risk by not being accompanied by responsible teachers to practices”
Meanwhile, the students of the Mariano Acosta School will continue with the occupation of the establishment that began on Friday afternoon and is expected to be extended, when they hold an assembly to analyze the continuity of the measure in claim for improvements in food, building maintenance and against mandatory labor practices.
“It was decided to extend the take. We will have an assembly and we will see how to continue,” Catalina, a member of the Acosta student center, told Télam.
The young woman explained that, after allegedly intentional power outages they suffered over the weekend, “now everything is fine at school and we got the power back on Saturday night.
Regarding the claims, Catalina pointed out that “food fails because they are few and not nutritious” and warned that there are also problems with the infrastructure because they do not have “enough classrooms or banks.”
“There are a million things that are broken, our building is quite old and needs a lot of fixing and nobody comes to fix it”he pointed.
In this sense, he added: “We cannot continue studying in the conditions we are studying; public education in CABA is failing.”
For Acuña it is “incomprehensible”
In relation to the taking of the Mariano Acosta School, the Buenos Aires Minister of Education, Soledad Acuña, said that it is “incomprehensible because there are no claims that have been discussed before; they went from zero to one hundred in a single week.”
Regarding the claim for the state of the building, the minister said in statements to the TN television channel that “it is a centenary building that has permanent maintenance works. We do not know in particular what they are referring to because it is not something that had been raised by the authorities from the school, by families or by students before.
Regarding the food, the minister assured that “we do not know the demand either, because they receive and received at this level all the food that they were requesting.”
“It is a demand and a violent and absolutely political demonstration,” the minister reiterated, affirming that the seizures in the schools are related to the distribution of some manuals that “are being fired up and distributed by Kirchnerism through its UTE union and through of different legislators from the Front of All and they are inciting the boys to take these violent measures”.
Meanwhile, asked about the alleged sabotage that left the school without power over the weekend, Acuña said: “I’m not sure what happened, but it’s a public building, it’s not a camp.”
“It is not a place that has to be prepared for the boys to spend the night and stay,” he concluded.
They denounce threats
For his part, the vice-chancellor of the Acosta, Julio Pascuarelli, indicated: “I would like that at some point the minister or the cameras of some television media could enter the school so that she can see the state of the building in which it is , since it says that it is a centennial school that has constant maintenance”.
In dialogue with Radio AM 750, the vice-chancellor maintained that from the institution “they do not agree with the taking”, but they do recognize the claims of the students.
In turn, he warned: “Right now what is happening to us is that we have a threatened governing body, telephone threats to families of students; difficult situations.”
“They have threatened me and they have also threatened relatives of students who are in the occupation,” Pascuarelli denounced and specified that they are extortionary messages.
On the other hand, he denied that the School did not file complaints with the Ministry of Education: “All the claims that the school makes are for records and are made to the maintenance company of the City government.”
He also added that this Buenos Aires company “is the one that was in charge on Friday of cutting off the electricity in the school and leaving the entire community of boys without school during the whole night.”
