Too many schools and universities in the cold, not only in Palermo, where there have been two serious episodes linked to unheated school environments, coinciding with a significant drop in outside temperatures, and a student felt sick from the cold while she was at university and a 10-year-old girl in an elementary school was stricken with hypothermia and hospitalized.
Similar cases occurred in Florence, at the Machiavelli-Capponi high school, in two secondary schools in the province of Rimini, in the Des Ambrois institute in Oulx in the upper Valsusa, in the Vernazza elementary school in Sturla, at the Montale institute in Bordighera, in a Cagliari high school.
"Cases that are causing a lot of discussion, which arouse strong and legitimate concerns in families and demonstrations among students in different parts of Italy. Also because they are not the only ones", comments Adriana Bizzarri, national coordinator of the Cittadinanzattiva school.
"Situations that happened in Palermo are truly intolerable, because in a school building students should be safe and not put their health at risk. Especially when it comes to children, as in the case of Emanuela, just ten years old. Not we can imagine that the safety of students is put at risk due to the increase in energy prices or due to delays in the maintenance of heating systems in schools", comments Concetto Trifilò, regional secretary of Cittadinanzattiva Sicily.
"The lack of technical personnel further aggravates the situation as the owner body, Municipality, Province or Metropolitan City, is not always able to intervene promptly with respect to the reports of the school principals", continues Bizzarri who adds: "Since these are situations that can cause serious damage to the health of the little ones, such as hypothermia, timeliness is essential.To prevent episodes of the same seriousness from occurring, we urge school administrators to exercise the power to suspend face-to-face teaching activities, as these are emergency events, and perhaps to activate the Dad in order not to penalize students and teachers.The owner institution, on the other hand, as responsible for the maintenance of the school building and its systems,subject to notification by the school manager, he is required to intervene promptly, otherwise students, parents, teachers of the school, can also implement a formal notice against the institution that owns the school".
Cittadinanzattiva invites students and families to send reports of lack of heating in the classrooms to the email scuola@cittadinanzattiva.it
