Rome, Orazio High School Without a Gym, Parents Protest

“Only promises and no intervention.” The protest of the families and the school board of the Orazio classical and linguistic high school, the oldest in the neighborhood, mounts Montesacro and of the entire third municipality.
For some time now, the school with its main headquarters at number 40 of via Alberto Savinio has been asking the competent body, the Metropolitan City, to intervene on the “partially unusable” assembly hall but also to find a solution to the long-standing problem of the gym in the branch office on via Isola Bella: “For years now, the one inside the school building, to accommodate the senior center, has been adapted to a sort of ballroom and students, both male and female, have been evicted into the outside courtyard,” explains the president of the school board, Cesidio Pulsone. Only that, between rain and cold, it is not always possible to do physical activity outside.

What triggered the protest was, in May 2023, the promise from the former Province to find the money to intervene at least in the assembly hall. “But those funds were never found for us, while around us and in the rest of Rome other schools have been renovated”, adds the parent.

In short: the school community ofHorace she feels forgotten and with a letter a few days ago she decided to make herself heard again.

«As is well known – we read in the document – “The works to remake the pitched roof of the assembly hall”, indicated with the highest priority level, were financed for a maximum amount of 450 thousand euros in three-year program of public works 2021-2023 and again in the first correction made on 30 July 2021 and then in the second in September of the same year”.

But those works, it was said, never started. And therefore today «the Orazio high school expects that the promises, made at the time, are awaited, and that the great hall, a fundamental space for discussion for the student community, is made safe and made suitable for carrying out the activities to which she is naturally suited.” Hence the protest of increasingly exasperated families due to the continuous postponements which are destined to create inconvenience and inevitable consequences also on educational activities.

«We understand the discontent of the parents of Orazio high school – says a Republic Daniele Parrucci, councilor of the metropolitan city and delegate for school buildings -. Unfortunately we had to resolve the “priorities of priorities”: overall we are employing 130 million Pnrr and 50 coming from our coffers, we have 183 active construction sites and barring any hitches we will arrive in October with 75% of these closed”.

But the funds are not enough for everyone. «Currently several schools remain out: the Visconti high school, the Leonardo Da Vinci-Colombowhere however there have been interventions, the Tacitus, the Thales and the headquarters of via della Bufalotta del Nomentano» and the Horace, precisely.

«For him and for the other institutes – he says Wigs — we asked the government for additional funds or to modify the current PNRR legislation so that we can use the approximately 40 million that come from the auction reduction”. But for now there has been no response from the government and Orazio is waiting.