While all the schools in the country began their school year, the Atacama region intensified its mobilizations with a hunger strike included alleging that the Ministry of Education had not fulfilled the required promises.
However, after days of negotiations the College of Teachers of Atacama He ended the strike and hunger strike after reaching an agreement with the Mineduc by signing a commitment that guarantees a pedagogical and infrastructure solution that runs through the educational facilities belonging to the Local Education Service of the region.
In this regard, Carlos Rodríguez, regional president of teachers, noted that this is the signing of a third document in which both parties assume their responsibility. However, he clarified that only two steps out of five of the request were prioritized to get out of the crisis: “We prioritize two to get out of this situation: infrastructure and pedagogy.”
For his part, the national leader of the union, Mario Aguilar, He maintained that the commitments signed at the time during January and February were not fulfilled which led to the intensification of the demonstrations.
The Minister of Education, Nicolás Cataldo, highlighted the signing of the document and stated that since the hunger strike began, a formula was sought to reach an agreement while there was concern among the protesters. “This resulted in a document that we agreed to sign today.which makes possible a work plan that will last for a while, which has mechanisms and deadlines that are reasonable for the purposes of addressing the issues,” he said.
Along these lines, he spoke about the apologies offered to the union leaders, specifying that “they are apologies that have no specific relationship with either my term in office or with this government, but rather they are apologies regarding a general lag that the Atacama educational system has“.
Finally, he stated that they hope that local authorities are capable of the process, although he highlighted that from Santiago the Mineduc and the Directorate of Public Education will be observing how the agreements in Atacama progress..
Agreement
The agreement signed between Mineduc and the Atacama teachers college consists of three items that deal with the installation of technical committees, an investment table in school infrastructure and a pedagogical table to recover lost learning.
The first item is the immediate activation of the “technical committees”, which will have the objective of identifying gaps in signed maintenance and supply agreements of material observing the subsidy channels of the schools dependent on the SLEP of Atacama.
The second point deals with the installation of a permanent table between different local authorities and representatives of the parents of the different schools in which will observe and expose infrastructure problems to identify the problems that educational establishments have.
Finally, a SLEP Pedagogical Plan for Atacama will be worked on, which will be complemented with the Pedagogical Plan developed by the College of Teachers of the region. There will also be a working table with the educational authorities of the region.
