In a farewell letter to the faculty and families, a director from a small town in Baix Pendès explains the reasons why he is resigning from his position, after ten years in office. This letter reflects the signs of fatigue and disappointment of many other Catalan school directors, who believe in inclusive, quality public education for all students. The directorates of the center met with the new minister Anna Simó last Monday describing the situation in which they find themselves.
The letter from the director of Joncosa de Montmell is posted on the school’s website while in Parliament, political forces try to reach a shared agreement on improving education.
Toni Álvarez has been the director of the Teresa Godes i Domènech school, located in the town of La Joncosa de Montmell, a small school that educates students from P3 to 6th grade. “The ten years that I have been a director have given me many personal and professional joys and satisfactions, but at a very high cost,” he confesses. His period in the direction of the center has accumulated various crises at his discretion: the economic one, the porcés, 1-O, the pandemic and “the constant demand to have a decent school building”.
They are crises, he explains, added to the lack of investment in public education that causes an acute lack of human and material resources that “we have compensated with the daily effort of the cloisters and professionals”, with the support of the family association of the school.
“I cannot hide my disenchantment with the Administration, in capital letters, and that it should not be confused with the administration of which I am a part, like all public workers.”
“As a director I have often felt underestimated in the demand for basic resources for the proper functioning of the school, despite having always received good words from the territorial services.” Álvarez points to the lack of resources as the first cause of the overload of the school.
“We have a political problem, of priorities, of immediate return of great ideas that do not last more than two years, of not respecting education professionals, of not being listened to despite appearances and big statements at the foot of the lectern” , keep going.
“Nothing is easy, but it is not necessary to make it even more difficult”, he adds and points, without mentioning it, to the Government: “It is not enough to change the look. Without adequate resources, the inclusive and quality school is in danger and daily life can become unsustainable endangering an inalienable right, the full right to live without exclusion or discrimination”. This right, he inquires, has an economic cost, 6% of the budget that the Catalan education law requires to be allocated to education. And that is not done.
Álvarez, who at the end of the letter reveals his fate, is going to work as a teacher in a special education school starting next year 2023-2024.
Remember that his motivation was to make a school rich in learning, and transformative for the students. “A school for all children, EVERYONE”. A public, inclusive and quality school. But that the projects must renew the management that is now left in the hands of its successors.
“I am leaving with as much sadness as satisfaction for the work done: living the daily life at the school and meeting alumni who carry out their life projects and love what was their school is part of the sample that these 10 courses have been successful I insist on thanking all the people who have contributed to join and make this journey possible”.
