TANDIL.- Economic proposals coming from La Plata do not satisfy service providers and Nearly half of the 715 rural school children in this district are left without transportation -In some cases from the beginning of this school year- and others may find themselves in a similar situation in just one month, when the province has to renew contracts with other routes that are still being completed normally.

The sector carriers recently rejected an offer from the Directorate General of Schools and Culture (DGEyC) in the province of Buenos Aires, which offered a cost renewal of 20.15% for the months of June and July and the latest tender. Budgets submitted to cover routes that – with the trust of the Tandil School Board – exceed 30 to 100% of the official budgets.

The conflict has reached a critical point, although it is noted that the local ruling party (together for change) and the provincial party (Frente de Todos) are working together and Most coincidences are normalized by the statute and that more than 300 children can resume face-to-face lessons.

“Given the province’s offer, some routes are feasible and some are not, as they are still outdated in terms of cost-effectiveness. Village carriers said in a statement Wednesday.

In this kind of deadlock in which the situation has entered, with more than a dozen routes that are not offered, The local mayor, Miguel Lung, demanded that provincial officials come to Tandil to be part of the dialogue table, which represents all sectors, including students and parents.

“In addition to the increase managed and granted by the province, the payment was also agreed within 30 days on the daily costs incurred by the carriers, which would substantially improve the situation of the providers,” they said from the municipality. ᲔᲠᲘ. They stressed that the school board had confirmed that the Buenos Aires administration had already applied to the sector carriers to pay the amount due in March and the amount will be transferred in April in the coming days.

As a result of these difficulties are students who have been teaching online for almost three months. The families of these children again staged a demonstration this week in front of the Municipal Palace and managed to meet Lung, who introduced them to a panorama that does not promise safe solutions.

There are 13 routes waiting to be covered. The first call for bids was abandoned and then had bidders, but with amounts in excess of the province they thought they had to pay, so they remained vacant.

“Hostage students”

District school counselors from Frente de Todos warned that the Buenos Aires government had reached and exceeded the final costs demanded by carriers (25,287 pesos per day against the 25,200 they claimed) “but still did not receive it”.

“(These 300 students) are being held hostage, which we understand is a clear cartelization of local carriers with contracts so far,” they condemned.

Meanwhile, a project is underway and is being designed to acquire its own units as an alternative, so that the state can take direct responsibility for rural school transport for the 715 students enrolled in the suburbs and cities farthest from the district. .

“We’re back in the pandemic,” admitted teachers and professors who still have to deal with bimodalism. In dialogue ᲔᲠᲘ They confirmed that they have students attending classes because they are closer or their parents take them and others who can not connect with them to send tasks via Whatsapp, which is a safer option for digital communication due to the weak signal.

So school activities are different and have nothing to do with educational institutions where teachers and managers work normally, but rather have the opportunity for students to arrive from greater distances, which in some cases exceeds 50 kilometers.

Jorge Novak has two children in Escuela San Antonio, one in kindergarten and one in another class. They enjoy transport that runs through the La Victoria Corridor, the only one that worked well last year and is now the only one that has never started since the start of the current school year.

I’m 10 miles from school, 50, back and forth, refueling in a tandoor. “The school works well, the teachers deserve applause because they do everything, but without buses there are many children who can not walk to class. Pointed to this average.

For example, in the San Benito district there is a school concentration with kindergarten, elementary school and technical high school. Only three of the five school transportation routes are active, allowing just over half of the 140 students educated there to arrive. In the case of the 6th Technical School in Fulton, it has three routes and none of them are serviceable.