TRENT. “Together with the Department I am seriously committed to experimenting with the 0-6 educational service”. To say it is Francesca Gerosa, vice president and councilor of the Province of Trento. “A service conceived primarily as a place for the development of the child’s personality which can be trivialized and reduced to a simple logistical solution for a temporary response to emergencies involving structural shortages in the nursery”.
The Municipality of Trento reported obstacles from the Province to Palazzo Thun’s desire to create childcare centers in its facilities. This way it could recover spaces within nursery schools underutilized.
The risk is that of excluding, as reported by some newspapers, over 300 children with the need to find spaces to rent. In the band 3-6 there are, for example, 32 children enrolled compared to 101 places in Povo. A similar situation to Cadine (54 members and 101 places) e Rolling pin (156 members and 256 places). The projection is for a very strong reduction, a halving, next year.
Despite the decline in births there would be no room for around 300 children in the nurseries. For this reason, after last year’s experiments which are being proposed again this summer, the Municipality of Trento, as explained to the Dolomites from the deputy mayor of the capital, Elisabetta Bozzarelliis ready for bring nursery school back into the framework of universal education and merge the 0-6 age group from next September (Article here).
But the Province would hesitate to file a complaint and so the Democratic Party intervenes and makes itself heard at the provincial level. “The knots come to a head“, the comment of Lucia Maestri and Francesca Parolari. “The words seem to remain empty to the proclamations with which he has repeatedly expressed his willingness to support and spread these services, also to respond in the valleys”.
Keep out of nests hundreds of families “when the spaces are there and the availability to activate them as well – continue Maestri and Parolari – it means cause very serious damage not only to parents who need this service, to mothers who have to go back to work, but to the same children who are deprived of valuable educational opportunities. The attitude of the provincial structure and the competent councilor towards this opportunity, which the Municipality of Trento built first with a serious and thoughtful analysis to evaluate its feasibility, is truly disheartening because it is perched on positions that seem out of time”.
The provincial councilor says “a little surprised by the controversy at a time when political and technical discussions with the Municipality of Trento are continuous and constant. In fact, several meetings took place between me and councilor Bozzarelli and between the provincial and municipal structures: meetings aimed at sharing how the construction of the 0-6 service model is a process characterized by gradualness to activate forms of experimentation that see the achievement of the various objectivesthrough the creation of a context made up of spaces, materials, times and moments of care and routines, experiences and activities in which to involve children”.
The provincial vice president also reports the data. “The nursery schools mentioned by councilor Bozzarelli and for which we have developed an insertion proposal, they could see these first experiences activated in the numbers hypothesized by the service“.
TO Wellreports the vice president of the Province 9 children (and with structural intervention 6 other places), Rolling pin 18 little ones and with intervention on the structure and fire prevention checks another 6 children who could reach a maximum of 12, while a Cadine there are 9 places with no other possibility of increase.
“I remember – continues Gerosa – that bands 0-3 and 3-6 respond to different criteria and requirements and the safety of the hosting spaces, compliance with the criteria required for the reception of children attending the nursery service, as well as age, for correct insertion and composition of groups, they are and remain priorities. As well clarified in the note with which the Service sent the proposal to the Municipality, the inspiring principles of the same are precisely graduality, sustainability And caution: the only conditions that allow a pedagogical-organizational designand which, in this first start-up phase, also wanted to consider the containment of the costs of adapting the structures involved, necessary to expand the number of children who can be welcomed”.
The service, explains Gerosa, therefore represented a feasibility project for all three structures involved, upon specific request of the Municipality, strictly related to the structural requirements established by the current regulatory law on socio-educational services for early childhood, which in Annex 2 of provincial resolution number 1891 of 2003 provides in paragraph B.1. “that the internal space cannot be less than a net usable surface area of 10 square meters per child seat“.
“The choice – highlights Gerosa – was to stick to these criteria, despite being experimentalrather making an exception to the external spaces for the pedagogical potential (the legislation would provide 30 square meters per child excluding exceptions). The same numbers identified are strictly related to the regulatory constraint of the educator/children numerical ratio (1 to 6 for children 3-18 months; 1 to 9 for children over eighteen months)”.
When, beyond the management of spaces, we then talk about pedagogical planning“the topic – continues the vice president of the Province – becomes even more complex and requires in-depth discussions with the world of teachers and pedagogists. But this has not been the in-depth discussion undertaken with the Municipality at the moment”.
There priority was to identify a stable space that was not created occasionally. “This, in fact, constitutes a step for the zerosei sections as the space identified and not subjected to constant reorganization for other functions (which translates into a section) gives the sense of a legitimized experience within the structure and allows margins of flexibility and in progress. Therefore in the evaluation the criterion of identifying a specific space identified in a section is one of the quality guarantees of the start of experiments, a space sought for all three structures”.
Finally, the Service “evaluated the absolute need to guarantee, beyond the sectional space, sadditional spaces and environments that are functional to an inclusive project that implies the possibility of forming small groups in the face of an increasingly marked presence of children with special educational needs“.
Also at stake is Vanessa Masè’s bill (Article here). “I reiterate in conclusion how important it is that the objectives are sharedwithout leaving room for exploitation, remembering that the protection of the child and his development have priority, not the quick logistical solution without a thought. For this on a provincial scale I have already activated the 0-6 working group in the Department also with the equivalent schools, which started work in mid-April. In short, we are certainly not wasting time”, concludes Gerosa.
