"From now on." The controversy over heat in classrooms marked the end of last year, and the Community of Madrid has moved to, with a significant financial outlay this summer, respond to union complaints with a powerful air conditioning plan: 1,240 million to immediately replace hot and cold systems and optimize the insulation of 1,400 educational centers.
An ambitious strategy that, according to estimates in the corridors of the Community, will improve the conditions of more than a million Madrid students: "It is a historic investment," says a senior regional official about this announcement, with which Isabel Díaz Ayuso seeks to silence criticism from the left and unions one month before the announced educational strike in Madrid. A threat that will predictably mark territorial politics throughout the fall.
Hence, Ayuso, at the beginning of this week back to school, key for the last Debate on the State of the Region of the legislature and with the controversy over the purchase of the Chamberí penthouse still hovering on the political agenda, has deployed important announcements in educational matters: record in resources, more scholarships, a reinforcement for the mathematics plan and the libraries, or improvements for Vocational Training students.
All of this, in addition, in the midst of a national storm over the PISA report and the fear among the regions that education in Spain will suffer a new setback in the most important quality index at the international level. It will be today when the OECD makes it public, but Ayuso already set his prediction yesterday: "The data are going to be tremendously alarming for Spanish education," he predicted during a visit to a school in Paracuellos del Jarama, where he stressed the need to "go much further" than mere "reinforcements" in certain areas, and redouble "the effort and knowledge" that Lomloe has "biased" in favor of "ideology" in the classrooms.
To this end, the Community of Madrid is preparing a battery of announcements that Ayuso will reveal on Thursday during the first session of the Debate on the State of the Region: the aid is already close to 280 million euros, the beneficiaries of the dining scholarships increase by 14% and the best FP files will have the tuition for higher degrees exempt or subsidized.
Although without a doubt the star measure of the package of regional actions in educational matters is the one related to the improvement of air conditioning in classes. In Ayuso's eyes, summers are increasingly "warmer" and "unprecedented" situations in temperatures occur more frequently in the region. This has led the regional Executive to activate "urgent" actions to alleviate this situation immediately. "From now on," stressed the regional president. Overheating in the classrooms, the lack of investment in improving insulation and the political response to these demands - with the Minister of Culture, Mariano de Paco, ironically about how heat can be a source of "inspiration" for students - complicated the end of the course for Ayuso and strengthened the claims of Más Madrid and the PSOE, aligned with the unions' protests.
Then as now, the Community of Madrid denounces that it does not have the exclusive powers to carry out all the reforms that the educational centers in the region need. "We are going to get involved, although it is not all our responsibility," Ayuso warned yesterday. Of the 1,240 million projected, the Ministry of Education will contribute 840, while the Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Local Administration, through the Regional Investment Program (PIR), will allocate approximately 400.
A forceful announcement with which the Community of Madrid opens a crucial week in a political key: Ayuso will launch more measures before the debate in the Assembly on Thursday, and will save some surprises for this date. Opposite, the opposition will seek to corner the regional president with the attic case, for which it will demand more explanations. And in the background, on the horizon of October, the strike that several unions are preparing for ratios, salaries and the heat in educational centers already looms. Before, the Ministry of Education, with Mercedes Zarzalejo at the head, will have to face the demands of the nursery schools, which have been on a war footing for months and which yesterday announced their intention to camp in Puerta del Sol.
