The children of the García Rivero Public School in the Atxuri Bilbaíno district left last Friday at 13:00 hours of the school at the request of the Department of Education. The portal El Salto has reported that the center has not been able to offer a basic service to families, without sufficient monitors to manage the dining room and without spaces to separate the tables, and has suffered the consequences especially of those with scarce resources.

The competent institution has had six months to redistribute the spaces of the centres and increase the financial resources for recruitment, and since 11 September this year, they have not met any of these requirements.

Protocols against COVID-19 have been met in part because of the “goodwill” of the management teams, but what was in the hands of the Department of Education is still to be resolved. Families, for their part, have sent a number of letters to the media expressing their indignation. They have reiterated the responsibility of the Government of Iñigo Urkullu. One of the last most significant events has been a picnic. On the way out of school, parents have sat in the middle of the street to eat with children. They have always respected the safety distance between their colleagues, washing their hands and putting blankets on the ground of the road.

Mari Chávez has described it as "cruel" that there is no dining room with two children of 6 and 8 years old. "Leaving children in school and receiving them divides us all the day of work, I had to ask for a vacation in order to be able to take care of them," he said.

Atxuri School, one of the oldest in Bilbao, has two lines per school year: an anterior patio and a paired one for the youngest. There is a narrow sidewalk at the school door and a bus stop behind. For years they had been calling for improvements in Education and COVID-19 "has exploded them in their face," added the expert in Public Health and Epidemiology, Amaia Baciggin. "We need more spaces and staff to ensure the health of children and workers and we need to give an urgent response to the call for play spaces to be made in a dignified way, rather than hallways and hall."

Casco Viejo

Neither in the school of Atxuri, nor in the Mujika School of the Old Town, the City Hall has prepared exterior spaces. The Mujika School has asked the City Council of Bilbao to adapt the pedestrian street of Santa Maria. This street is used exclusively for loading and unloading from 07:00 until 11:00 hours. They have also asked the City Hall to leave the classrooms of the civic centre of the old Bourbon building, which is at the end of the short street and is public.

In addition, the Department of Education has been requested to be able to make the planned departures and excursions and to set up a continuous day so that families can take their children out of the dining room without having to bring them back in the afternoon.

Conflict

Meanwhile, the new Education Advisor, Jokin Bildarratz, has complained to the media that “the unions have not offered him 100 days of trust and continue to maintain the call for strike by September 15.”

A few meters beyond the Casco Viejo and the Atxuri, the Tiboli school has sent an email to families: 99% of the teachers will follow the strike and 100% of the rest of the workers. The atmosphere is very calm, and the counsellor’s meetings with the five unions did not serve to disrupt the mobilization, as according to the Bildarratz unions it did not commit itself to solving the problems that the schools had planned since June.