From Santiago, building more and better public education

Faced with a system that has been in convulsion for many years and with a strong paralysis derived from the pandemic, but also from the social outbreak and multiple accumulated shortcomings, our commitment has been to build educational and management responses that aim to overcome the crisis; and we have done it through dialogue, building trust and developing capabilities in our educational communities.

Irací Hassler Jacob. Mayor of Santiago. Rodrigo Roco Fossa. Director of Municipal Education. Santiago. 6/6/2024. Building more and better public education has been one of the main tasks we have assumed since the first day of our administration.

The structural crisis that affects public education in the country is a mystery to no one, with a financing system with variable income for average attendance that fails to cover its fixed costs, and with a gigantic, long-standing liability of disinvestment in maintenance. and infrastructure that has been evident in our community. Faced with a system that has been in convulsion for many years and with a strong paralysis derived from the pandemic, but also from the social outbreak and multiple accumulated shortcomings, our commitment has been to build educational and management responses that aim to overcome the crisis; and we have done so through dialogue, building trust and developing capacities in our educational communities.

Just as an example, in July 2021 in Santiago there were establishments unable to return to in-person attendance due to serious infrastructure problems, such as the Luis Calvo Mackenna School (without a roof), or the Liceo 4 Isaura Dinator (without bathrooms). The INBA was converted into a shelter and was in deplorable conditions. The Haiti School had been waiting for a solution for almost twelve years due to an earthquake building that was no longer in a position to house its educational work. Today, these establishments have definitive solutions to these problems, becoming a platform to continue moving forward.

Only considering the resources already awarded in the MINEDUC calls, the investment for school infrastructure improvements that we are carrying out ($5,382 million) more than triples that generated between 2017 and 2021 ($1,707 million). To this investment we have added municipal resources, also managed projects with other Ministries (Sports, Energy, National Assets) and energizing initiatives that were paralyzed since 2019. Today we continue to formulate and present more projects for the benefit of the students of the 44 schools and public high schools, since we know that gaps remain that need to be resolved.

During these almost three years of management, we have participatively built the Educational Development Plan of the commune, giving life to an Educational Model based on education for life and democracy that seeks to respond to the educational crisis that affects our entire society. . Curriculum development, contextualization and inclusion are pillars to generate comprehensive, deep and transformative learning; and this emerges from our teachers’ own classroom work and is nourished by collaboration and networking with their peers and other professionals.

We have strengthened and expanded the School Integration Program (PIE) to all our establishments. At the same time, we gave their well-deserved retirement incentive to 59 education assistants and 165 teachers who had unjustifiably been waiting for long years; and we have signed and honored protocols in accordance with all the trade associations in the sector, returning benefits that were taken from them overnight.

Our management is taking care of long-neglected problems; leaving behind apathy and immobility in the face of the crisis of municipal education; overcoming the lack of dialogue or contempt for teaching work. Despite all the difficulties, with concrete actions we are strengthening public education in the capital commune of Chile, which welcomes just over 28 thousand students every day, where 50.4% come from 222 communes throughout the country, mainly of the Metropolitan Region; and where 39% correspond to migrant families.

For this reason, we are making the largest economic contribution made to education from the municipality, with $10,680 million for this year (a figure that in the previous mayoral period corresponded to $8,100 million). However, today more central resources are required, especially to improve infrastructure. For this reason, we call on the Government to approve the more than 20 projects that we have presented and that have not yet been financed; investing more in education and strengthening, together with communities, regular attendance and coexistence in all its forms.

In Santiago we will continue to put public education at the center, rebuilding trust and assuming with commitment and work the responsibility of improving the public educational service to build an education for life, peace and social cohesion that ensures the deployment of all potential of the boys, girls, young people and adults who are educated in the classrooms and playgrounds of public education in Santiago.