CREAM – They were hoping for a change of direction from the Municipality, but that won’t be the case. The Social Policies commission, which met yesterday evening in the Hostages room and was attended by some parents of Iside Franceschini, who were strongly opposed to the cut in the sixth section, reiterated the administration’s position.
That is, the need to transfer the children to the other five classes from September. Moms and dads have been making their disapproval clear for weeks now. Yesterday they were able to follow the proceedings only as spectators, while today at the nursery they will be able to speak at a meeting called by the administration itself.
«Our reasons are clear — he reiterated before the start of the session Laura Carellipresident of the nursery school management committee —: the reasons given by the municipal administration, however, are not as clear and were not presented in a transparent way. There has been talk of a demographic decline but for the former Montessori there are always waiting lists. Considering that it is a private, fee-paying school, the waiting lists clearly show that citizens choose ours over the other nursery schools in the city. So, why close the section at Montessori? Among other things, this year the applications for registration have increased compared to last, therefore not decreasing”.
In recent days Carelli had already highlighted the doubts with other parents: Daniela Venturini (member of the Management Committee and mother of a child from section A), Laura Ardia (class representative of section E, which will be the dismembered one), Elena Pini (mother of a child from D) e Raffaella Mainardiwhose child is enrolled for the next school year.
The manager of the municipal citizen services area, Francesca Moruzzi, provided the data of those enrolled, to date, for the 2024-2025 year: «There are 128 out of the 130 places available, they will therefore be divided into five sections of 26 children maximum». And he underlined the difficulties in securing substitute staff: «Out of 18 candidates who sent us their CV, none were suitable to teach at Franceschini – he continued -: we were forced to ask teachers for 603 hours of overtime, to cover colleagues who were legitimately absent due to illness. We do not hide the difficulties in guaranteeing educational continuity every day. For this reason we also met with the teaching staff, to evaluate a reorganization process with a review of five sections, imagining that this is the model that comes closest to the possibility of having the greatest number of co-presence of teachers”.
Moruzzi then concluded: «We want to guarantee pedagogical quality and sustainability of educational interventions, avoiding the risk of interrupting the service as much as possible. The project we presented to the teaching staff and the school management committee highlights that the school-family collaboration network will support this change.” The data has been disputed by Laura Zanibelli from Forza Italia: «The places available at the Franceschini nursery school are 150, not 130. The parents enrolled their children knowing there were six sections, today they find themselves with five». And the councilor for education Emanuela Nichetti he reiterated that «for nursery schools there are evident drops in enrollments in Crema. There are 98 more places in nursery schools than users. And even at Franceschini, this year, we have no waiting list.”
