After stupor and incomprehension, anger.
This Tuesday, at the end of the afternoon, representatives of Parisian vocational high schools threatened with closure gathered in front of the Suzanne-Valadon establishment, in the 18th arrondissement.
They responded to the call of Anne-Claire Boux, deputy (EELV) to the mayor of Paris in charge of city policy.
" I am very angry.
In the name of financial management, the region wants to close establishments on a human scale, with small staff and focused on educational projects.
Education is not for sale.
It doesn't have to be profitable.
It is a rampage that will lead to the reinforcement of inequalities.
We are not going to let it happen, ”wants the chosen one.
In a letter sent this Tuesday to Pap Ndiaye, the Minister of National Education, Anne-Claire Boux warns against "the disastrous consequences" of these closures and asks him to cancel them.
The time is thus for mobilization after the announcement, on November 8, of the partial or total closure of 9 Parisian high schools by Valérie Pécresse, the president (Libres) of the Ile-de-France region, and the rectorate, because of a "historic decline in the number of high schools in Paris" and the dilapidation of these establishments.
Transferred training
Six professional high schools (Brassaï in the 15th century, Armand-Carrel in the 19th century, the Charenton site of Théophile-Gautier in the 12th century, the Friant site of Lucas-de-Nehou in the 19th century, Suzanne-Valadon in the 18th century and Charles- de-Gaulle in the 20th) as well as a general high school (Georges-Brassens in the 19th) will close their doors at the start of the 2023 academic year. And two others in 2024 (the Jacques-Monod vocational high school in the 5th and the general and technological high school François-Rabelais in the 18th century).
And if only the sites will close, while the training will be transferred to other high schools, “when the information was made official, we were flabbergasted, confides a visual arts teacher.
I don't know where I'm going to be transferred.
The future of temporary teachers is uncertain.
And we're going to lose students along the way.
Most are fragile.
Without the social bond created within the establishment and the neighborhood, they risk ending up on the street.
Sylvaine Baehrel, head of secondary education at the FCPE in Paris, shares this concern.
"This measure plunges into the insecurity of students with precarious education," she is alarmed.
“Next year, we risk dropping out”
“It seems we're going to have to go to the 16th or 12th centuries.
If I have to wake up at 6 a.m. and arrive at 8 a.m., I won't last two months.
And currently, we are 18 maximum per class and the teachers are close to us.
Next year, we risk dropping out, ”annoys Julien, educated in first class “commerce”.
The Georges-Brassens general education high school, in the 19th century, is also in the crosshairs.
Emmanuel, father of a teenager who pursues a double course in this establishment after having integrated the mastery of the Opéra-Comique, deplores the brutality of the announcement.
“Parents are in shock.
Our children are supposed to integrate Bergson into the 19th century.
This school complex has 1,800 students.
They will no longer have their teachers and not sure that the acoustic conditions are met for the practice of music.
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Determined to lead the battle against the closures of the nine Parisian high schools, Anne Hidalgo's assistant asked to be received with a delegation of parents, students, teachers and education advisers by the Minister of Education. National Education to start a consultation.