“I want to see farms in Sevran!
»It has been several months since the mayor (DVG), Stéphane Blanchet, continues to praise the merits of urban agriculture to destroy the image of his city, too often associated with news items to his liking.
The elected is therefore "happy" to announce that a private agricultural high school should open its doors at the start of the 2022 school year, in the town, with the blessing of the Ministry of Agriculture.
This new establishment is supported by the Saltus Campus association, behind which we find Agrof'île.
This structure bringing together farmers, agronomists, landscapers, teachers and consumers was set up in 2016 with the aim of promoting agroforestry, an ancestral practice which consists of associating trees, crops and animals on the same plot.
“Saltus Campus was created with the aim of landing this agricultural school,” continues Stéphane Blanchet.
For that, they needed the firm agreement of a community.
They contacted the city and were auditioned by the participatory council.
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Disgruntled residents have launched a petition
This body, made up of 28 members, met between March and May to work on the vast land development operation Terre d'eau et de cultures, a 32 hectare area between the Sablons and Beaudottes districts. Its recommendations, unveiled during the last municipal council, invite the town hall to favor initiatives linked to urban agriculture, burying in the process the project of a wave of surfing which will therefore have caused more ink to flow than water.
The town hall proposed to Saltus Campus to integrate the Maurice-Ravel nursery school, which had been abandoned for more than two years. A high school in a place dedicated to toddlers? "The members of the association were skeptical at the start," admits the mayor of Sevran. But the Ravel school was not intended to be a kindergarten. The architects had foreseen its evolution. We will only change the toilets. "
The establishment will be located on the edge of the area devoted to Terre d'eaux et de culture.
“There is something coherent and complementary, underlines Stéphane Blanchet.
The school will be open on these 32 hectares, with a local path to access it.
The students will not go through the Sablons.
"Precautions that do not prevent the fears of some residents of this residential area, who have launched a petition on the Internet to assert their" firm opposition to this project. "
She had collected a hundred signatures this Monday afternoon.
"Bridging the gap between the city and the Ile-de-France countryside"
As agricultural education is federated, Saltus Campus has chosen to join Unrep (National Rural Education and Promotion Union).
"The future of agriculture depends on agroecological management," points out its managing director, Nicolas Boivin.
The goal of this school is to bridge the gap between the ultra-dense city and the Ile-de-France countryside and to awaken all populations, wherever they live, to the possibility of working in the agricultural world.
Because the countryside is a reservoir of jobs.
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The announcement of the opening of this establishment in Sevran comes at a time when in the neighboring town of Vaujours, the Lycée du Paysage et de l'Environnement Fénelon, deserted by its students, is at the heart of a legal battle between the management, who wants it closed, and teachers who oppose it.
"It is absolutely not about the resumption of the Lycée de Vaujours," insists Nicolas Boivin of Unrep.
The networks made that teachers of Fénelon find themselves involved in the Saltus Campus project.
If some of them want to participate in this adventure, they will be welcome.
But it is another project which is born, that of an associative structure carrying values of agroecology and which will not be at all on the themes of the landscape.
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Forty students expected in the first year
Several elected officials, such as the departmental councilor Dominique Dellac (PCF) and the deputy Clémentine Autain (LFI), have mobilized in recent months alongside the teachers. "We were the architects of this new opening," wants to believe Jean-Marc Rafenberg, staff representative of the Landscape and Environment school and spokesperson for the opposition to the closure. In Sevran, we will provide other training, with a renewed teaching team. "
If the future high school will also be private, it will be secular unlike that of Fénelon, administered by a management body for Catholic education.
Forty students are expected at the start of the first school year in 2022. Two years later, the establishment should have between 110 and 150 teenagers, "never beyond", assures the mayor of Sevran.
"It's a small structure, able to meet realistic needs for agroecology professions," says Nicolas Boivin.
The outline of the training to be provided there must still be submitted to a regional committee for agricultural education, a body placed under the responsibility of the Regional Directorate for Food, Agriculture and Forestry.
The commission will rule on June 30.