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Without furniture or staff reactivate 11 thousand schools
Juchitán.— With the return to face-to-face classes following two years of the pandemic, the deficit of teachers and furniture in the entity’s 10,746 public schools will worsen, warn Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), school administrators and teachers. If this deficit trend is not reversed, the deterioration of educational quality will persist and deepen, they point out.
Since the first days of January of this year, hundreds of students from the 11 normal schools of the entity have turned the streets of the center of the city of Oaxaca into a protest zone, in search of hiring to join the workforce. The State Institute of Public Education of Oaxaca (IEEPO) lost the power to hire normalist graduates since 2013, following the educational reform promoted by the government of former President Enrique Peña Nieto.
For the spokesman for Section 22 of the SNTE, affiliated with the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), Wilbert Santiago, the inability of the Oaxacan government to hire graduates began in 2013, but worsened in 2015, when with the Decree 2, known as a decree, took control of the IEEPO from that trade union. Since then, the deficit of teachers, hours of classes and furniture have increased.
The director of the Heliodoro Charis Castro Indigenous Primary School, in the Zapotec community of Álvaro Obregón, Ulises Santiago Jiménez, says that since January 2020, when one of the teachers retired, the IEEPO has not filled that position. Now that they returned to face-to-face classes, two months ago, the teacher who covered the first grade included the second graders and now struggles with more than 35 students in class.
Due to the lack of teachers, explains Wilbert Santiago with the statistics of the Indicators of the National Educational System in his hands, of the 5 thousand 365 public schools of complete organization of the 2020/2021 school year in the entity, more than half have become in multi-grade schools, to the detriment of educational quality, because due to the lack of teachers, a teacher works with two compacted grades.
Indigenous preschools and primary schools operate under these circumstances, says Enrique Montero, coordinator of the headquarters of Juchitán and Tehuantepec, on the Isthmus, because since 2015 the IEEPO has not promptly covered the absences of teachers who retire or die.
Without these covered places, he adds, educational needs are not met, which contributes to school deterioration.
Each cycle, he says, there is an average of 15 teachers missing per school zone, preschool and indigenous primary. This situation, he adds, provokes the annoyance of his parents, as in the Heliodoro Charis Castro Indigenous Elementary School, of the Seventh Section of Juchitán, or in the Lázaro Cárdenas elementary school, of San Francisco Ixhuatán, an example of what happens in the almost 3 thousand schools of that level in the entity.
Since 2019, following the cancellation of the Peña Nieto educational reform, the 11 normal schools of the entity increased their enrollment and graduated an average of 120 future teachers who faced, without success, the Unit of the System for the Career of Teachers and Teachers (USICAMM), attached to the SEP, which examines and verifies the degree, before authorizing admission to teaching.
The problem, says Wilbert Santiago, is that the rural normal schools do not deliver the titles as soon as the school year ends, but until several months later, so the 2022 graduates will not be hired, since they will not automatically have the title, as as required by USICAMM; This is how the teaching deficit has dragged on for years.
In mid-February, the IEEPO authorities reported the hiring of 2,577 graduates of the 11 normal schools of different generations; however, it is insufficient, warns Section 22 of the SNTE, to cover the deficit of 500 teachers with which since 2013 each school year ends in 5,365 state primary schools. While the deficit for 4,500 indigenous preschool and primary schools is also 500 teachers, says the union.
If at the primary and preschool levels there is a lack of teachers due to teacher retirements or deaths, in the 2,534 technical, general and telesecundaria schools there is an alarming deficit of hours/subjects per week since 2015, which later turned into “tequio hours,” says Santiago.
These hours add up to more than 100,000, which the IEEPO owes to the teachers who cover them, in addition to those assigned to them as part of their contract.
In addition, nine out of 10 primary schools lack media classrooms and only two of each secondary school have them, says the organized teachers.
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