The Alberdi school in Venezuela, a closed down school taken over by the community and turned into a progressive education centre, has been threatened with closure by the Caracas pro-Oligarchy mayor.
There has been a change of mayor of Caracas, Juan Barreto, and the School
Defense Committee were called to a meeting to answer for their actions. The school director, Oscar Negrin, was accused of corruption. He was physically attacked by the mayor at the meeting. After the meeting the mayor decided to close the school. The Mayor has since realised that he went too far and didn't have the evidence to back up his accusations. He has offered, not only to keep the commitee on, but to pay them. He is due to come in to the school to make an apology to Oscar and the rest, but his intention is to do it in private to minimise the embarrassment to himself. This is not being accepted by the committee unless he calls a big assembly of the community and publicly takes back what he said as a large percentage of the community believe what he had said.
Background info, extracted from hands of Venezuela website:
The Juan Bautista Alberdi a primary education school which was taken over by the community. Located in the “La Pastora” parish in the Libertador Municipality, is a state school that officially belongs to the administration of the City Hall
where Alfredo Peña is the mayor and insistently shouts his opposition to Chavez.
It is for this reason that when a conspiratorial strike was initiated in December 2002, mayor Peña exerted pressure in order that the schools under his responsibility would not open their doors, in order to further destabilize the Chavez government. He was successful at first.
So, on January 7, day on when classes should have re-commenced after the holiday period, the pressure to keep the schools closed grew stronger. During those first days many schools were taken over by the communities. This was the case of the school “Juan Bautista Alberdi”. Immediately after this, the "Committee in Defence of the children of the school Alberdi" was founded by the students, the parents assembly and other representatives, some teachers who had not adhered to the stoppage, and various members of the community. Faced with the lockout they decided to take control of the school by assault.
Out of the total of the educational staff, only six teachers were willing to work. The rest of them, led by the director of the school did not show up. However, she sent a letter where she reaffirmed her position: "I will go to work after February 12 when Chavez will no longer be the president". Sanctions were applied, the six teachers who had kept working at school did not receive their wages, while those who had not worked were given prizes. The press described the "taker-overs" as "delinquents", and at the same time, legal action was brought against the intervening assembly where they are catalogued as "organized delinquency".
During the first days, those intervening were successful in restoring the school and conditioning the infrastructure (as even water was missing), all within an immense collective action. Furthermore, they succeeded in restarting classes, as these were not even given regularly in the "normality" prior to the stoppage, since "classes were called off at any pretext..."
Once the failure of the stoppage became evident, the school director and the old teaching staff, under the supervision of Mayor Peña, decided to return to the school in order to retake it, as though nothing had happened, as also happened in other schools that had been taken over, and where "normality" had been restored, after negotiations. But with the Alberdi School this was not the case as the position of the intervening popular assembly remained firm.
Today, this school has become the centre of organized development of the community, with not only its traditional function of giving classes, but it is also the nucleus for literacy and primary education for adults, secondary studies for adults excluded from the system, University education, community workshops, amongst them the incipient foundation of a school of documentary cinema.
In the meantime, the national government, through the Ministry of Education, has supported the community initiative, recognizing the previous school year, and is now negotiating the assignment of a new teaching team with the community. The community is well aware now that the school belongs to them and that the success reached will not be annulled by any legal sentence, nor by any other measure that may be applied.
Defense Committee were called to a meeting to answer for their actions. The school director, Oscar Negrin, was accused of corruption. He was physically attacked by the mayor at the meeting. After the meeting the mayor decided to close the school. The Mayor has since realised that he went too far and didn't have the evidence to back up his accusations. He has offered, not only to keep the commitee on, but to pay them. He is due to come in to the school to make an apology to Oscar and the rest, but his intention is to do it in private to minimise the embarrassment to himself. This is not being accepted by the committee unless he calls a big assembly of the community and publicly takes back what he said as a large percentage of the community believe what he had said.
Background info, extracted from hands of Venezuela website:
The Juan Bautista Alberdi a primary education school which was taken over by the community. Located in the “La Pastora” parish in the Libertador Municipality, is a state school that officially belongs to the administration of the City Hall
where Alfredo Peña is the mayor and insistently shouts his opposition to Chavez.
It is for this reason that when a conspiratorial strike was initiated in December 2002, mayor Peña exerted pressure in order that the schools under his responsibility would not open their doors, in order to further destabilize the Chavez government. He was successful at first.
So, on January 7, day on when classes should have re-commenced after the holiday period, the pressure to keep the schools closed grew stronger. During those first days many schools were taken over by the communities. This was the case of the school “Juan Bautista Alberdi”. Immediately after this, the "Committee in Defence of the children of the school Alberdi" was founded by the students, the parents assembly and other representatives, some teachers who had not adhered to the stoppage, and various members of the community. Faced with the lockout they decided to take control of the school by assault.
Out of the total of the educational staff, only six teachers were willing to work. The rest of them, led by the director of the school did not show up. However, she sent a letter where she reaffirmed her position: "I will go to work after February 12 when Chavez will no longer be the president". Sanctions were applied, the six teachers who had kept working at school did not receive their wages, while those who had not worked were given prizes. The press described the "taker-overs" as "delinquents", and at the same time, legal action was brought against the intervening assembly where they are catalogued as "organized delinquency".
During the first days, those intervening were successful in restoring the school and conditioning the infrastructure (as even water was missing), all within an immense collective action. Furthermore, they succeeded in restarting classes, as these were not even given regularly in the "normality" prior to the stoppage, since "classes were called off at any pretext..."
Once the failure of the stoppage became evident, the school director and the old teaching staff, under the supervision of Mayor Peña, decided to return to the school in order to retake it, as though nothing had happened, as also happened in other schools that had been taken over, and where "normality" had been restored, after negotiations. But with the Alberdi School this was not the case as the position of the intervening popular assembly remained firm.
Today, this school has become the centre of organized development of the community, with not only its traditional function of giving classes, but it is also the nucleus for literacy and primary education for adults, secondary studies for adults excluded from the system, University education, community workshops, amongst them the incipient foundation of a school of documentary cinema.
In the meantime, the national government, through the Ministry of Education, has supported the community initiative, recognizing the previous school year, and is now negotiating the assignment of a new teaching team with the community. The community is well aware now that the school belongs to them and that the success reached will not be annulled by any legal sentence, nor by any other measure that may be applied.
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