In Gravataí (RS), students from Escola Estadual Estado de São Paulo are missing classes because they don’t have school transportation to go to school.
The institution, located in Bairro Morungava, a rural area of the city, has an agreement signed with the city hall for the transport of 120 students. The number, however, is insufficient. According to the director of the school, Ricardo Britz, currently around 80 of them are not attending school due to lack of transportation.
According to Bianca Regina, mother of a student, some of the drivers, sensitized by the situation, began to offer “rides” to the students, a fact that led to overcrowding of vehicles, lack of safety and constant delays. With the delay in solving the problem, many students started not attending classes.
State School of São Paulo, in Gravataí (RS), currently has about 80 students who are not attending school due to lack of transportation / Reproduction
Faced with the situation, the community requested a meeting with the 28th Regional Education Coordination (CRE), responsible for state schools in the Gravataí region, held last Wednesday (29).
According to Bianca, the group was informed that the state government will hold a tender to expand the offer. The coordinator undertook to carry out the hiring by Monday. “This could have already been done. It was what we claimed in the meeting with the CRE.”
At the hearing, the coordinator of CRE, Marilza Pacheco Ramos, said she will try to resume the municipality’s contract with the State Program to Support School Transport (Peate). A meeting with the municipal management should take place on the 5th, with the aim of resuming the agreement, broken in 2018.
broken agreement
The report of Brazil in fact RS spoke with members of the school community, who reported that the contract with the program was terminated because the state government often delayed payments and the amounts were insufficient.
Our report tried to contact the Gravataí Municipal Secretary of Education in order to confirm the information, without success. The space remains open for the answer.
According to the CRE coordinator, these delays were facts “from the previous government”, and that since the “beginning of the Leite government, these delays have not happened”.
In addition, she claims that few cities in the state do not currently adhere to the Peate. Glorinha and Viamão, for example, are municipalities in the region covered by 28ª CRE who have transport contracts in force and with regular payments through the Program, he explained.
Worrying situation for the whole region
Still according to Bianca, the problem faced by the families of Escola Estado de São Paulo is similar in the four state schools in the rural region, affecting around 700 children.
Faced with the situation, the families requested a public hearing to discuss solutions, filed by the mandate of Councilwoman Anna Beatriz (PSD). The hearing is scheduled to take place on Wednesday (5), from 19h, in the City Council Chamber.
Families of students from these schools, the municipal secretary of education, Magda Ely da Silva, the coordinator of the 28th CRE, representatives of the Public Ministry of Gravataí, guardianship counselors and other authorities were summoned to participate.
During the afternoon of this Friday (31), the vice-president of the CPERS/Union, Alex Saratt, was at the school and spoke with the management. He stated that the institution suffers from the neglect of the current government in the matter of school transport. “The irresponsible policy made the students face overcrowded buses, which posed a risk to the lives of these children,” he said.
The union leader also reports that this situation forces many parents to change their children from school unit, forcing a situation that he called “forced municipalization”, which led to the emptying of the State of São Paulo. In addition, he stated that the union will be present at the public hearing called by the school community
CPERS/Union visiting the Estado de São Paulo school. For vice president Alex Saratt, the institution suffers from the neglect of the current government in terms of school transport / Photo: Cpers/Sindicato
In the same vein, Vitalina Gonçalves, president of the Union of Public Education Workers in Gravataí (SPMG), explained that the lack of school transport is a “crisis for the entire region”, as the government has not invested enough in recent years, doing the city halls broke the contracts.
“These are students who are losing, more and more, the opportunity to study. How is it possible to talk about equal opportunities for everyone? , because they don’t have transportation”, he lamented.
Vitalina also reports that the union’s position is that the responsibility for education cannot be placed solely on the municipalities, since basic education is a shared responsibility, especially elementary education.
“To the extent that the state of RS does not fulfill its part, there is a vacuum. We are talking today about the New Secondary School, what New is this? If our children are even without transportation”, he contests.
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Source: BdF Rio Grande do Sul
Editing: Katia Marko
