The Vila Real de Santo António City Council considers the halt of works at the Vila Real de Santo António Secondary School to be "worrying", a situation that has been going on for half a year and is harming the quality of teaching of a thousand students.
The municipality claims that it has made "all the steps and contacts in its power to unblock the situation with Parque Escolar – the entity responsible for the requalification project – and with the Ministry of Education". but, despite this, the response has been “silence”, thus demanding “a quick response to restore the normality of the school year”.
For this reason, the City Council was present, this Monday, at the visit organized by the General Council of the Group of Schools of VRSA to the temporary premises of the secondary school in Vila Real de Santo Antonio, where the school community and several deputies to the Assembly of the Republic they visited the approximately 30 classrooms that are operating in temporary containers that no longer offer the most basic conditions of comfort and/or safety.
«Because the quality of education is one of the most basic rights of citizenship, the municipality cannot tolerate that the secondary school in Vila Real de Santo António continues to be transformed into a shipyard for longer and demands that the guardianship urgently find the financing mechanisms that guarantee the completion of the works and restore the normality of the classes», says the president of the Chamber Luís Gomes.
Likewise, the municipality sympathizes with the position taken by the General Council, which this week warned of the fact that VRSA secondary students are not on an equal footing with students from other schools in the country who have already completed their requalification works and are not in a shipyard situation.
«Although we recognize the efforts of teachers and staff, who have been working in temporary conditions for many months and giving their best, we believe that the council's students, especially those who will undergo final assessment exams, deserve better conditions. , as indeed we have been providing, in recent years, to all pre-school and first cycle schools that are under the management of the City Council», observes Luís Gomes.
Likewise, the municipality will continue to make available to the school, at no cost, the facilities of its Sports Complex, so that students can continue to attend physical education classes, since the school's sports pavilion is located in work for two years.
Although this provision is free for the school, the provision of municipal sports infrastructure for physical education classes has already represented, for the City Council, an expense in the order of 120 thousand euros.
The requalification of the VRSA Secondary School, in operation since 1963, was integrated in the Project for the Modernization of Secondary Schools, promoted by the tutelage and developed by EPE. sixteen months. The interventions should have been completed by the end of 12.
In addition to VRSA students, the secondary school also receives secondary education students from the neighboring municipalities of Alcoutim and Castro Marim.
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