14ymedio, Havana, August 21,2024 — It would take 1,161 teachers for the school year in Ciego de Ávila to get off on the right foot. The local authorities say that they have enough budget to hire the necessary staff, but prefer to return it to the state coffers at the end of the year rather than “relieve the pockets a little” of the teachers. The reason for this attitude is a mystery that the Minister of Education, Naima Trujillo, failed to clear up this Tuesday.
Meeting with teachers and leaders from Avila, Trujillo attributed the non-use of the budget surplus to the lack of originality of the local cadres. She alluded to the “mechanical thinking” when organizing the course, the lack of “flexibility and intelligence,” and stressed that everything seems to indicate that it will be a year “full of tensions.”
Trujillo asked the managers to be “honest” with the families in the face of the shortages that she foresees for the sector. “This year we will only be able to deliver two uniforms in preschool, one in each initial grade and one in the fifth grade. And we don’t want it to be like that, because the school uniform is a symbol of equity, which we can’t lose. But in the current economic situation we lack the raw materials to make more,” she said.
“This year we will only be able to deliver two uniforms in preschool, one in each initial grade and one in fifth grade”
In fact, the official press has been filled in the weeks prior to the school year with official “apologies” because the textile factories have not lived up to the demand for uniforms. Escambray reported on Tuesday, in a sarcastic tone, that the industry has a number of uniforms that are “unstitched,” in the neighboring province of Sancti Spíritus. One of the explanations for the lack of uniforms bordered on the hilarious: garments are missing because they are manufactured according to a “historic” record – if a child needs a preschool uniform in 2023, the following year he will