The AMPAS (parents’ associations) of Manilva are outraged after Miguel Angel Briones cancelled a meeting half an hour before they were due to leave for the Education Delegation in Málaga. Some mothers had even requested a day’s holiday to attend. The families, who have been waiting more than a year for answers about the new secondary school, are now asking Miguel Ángel Briones to travel to the municipality.
The AMPAS of Manilva will have to keep waiting to learn first-hand about the situation of the future secondary school. The meeting scheduled for this Thursday at 11:30 with the provincial delegate for Education in Málaga, Miguel Ángel Briones, was cancelled barely half an hour before the departure time for Málaga, on the grounds that the provincial official had another meeting, after more than a year of waiting for a slot in Mr Briones’ diary.
The appointment had been communicated by telephone through the delegate’s secretary last Tuesday and was to be attended by representatives of the AMPAS, the management of the current secondary school, the Education councillor and the mayor of Manilva. After more than a year of trying to secure this meeting, the families had hoped to obtain answers about a project they consider urgent: the construction of the new secondary school for Manilva and Casares.
The cancellation has caused considerable discontent, especially among those who had had to take a day’s holiday to attend. The time spent organising the day and the journey has come to nothing because of a last-minute notice.
The AMPAS ask the delegate to come to Manilva
After expressing their anger to the secretary herself over this last-minute cancellation, the families’ representatives have proposed that the next meeting, scheduled for 30 October, be held in Manilva and that Miguel Ángel Briones himself travel to the municipality, as he has done in Estepona and in other towns where there are problems relating to education infrastructure.
They consider this request reasonable and that the delegate himself should travel to Manilva, avoiding the need for several people to take time off work and organise a trip to Málaga that disrupts the daily life of an entire family. The AMPAS point out that one of the responsibilities of a public office is to approach citizens, listen to their problems and seek solutions, especially when it concerns an issue as important as the educational needs of two municipalities.
The families hope that this request will be accepted and that it will finally allow the meeting to take place without having to bear once again the inconvenience of a journey that, on this occasion, has proved fruitless.
A secondary school still waiting for solutions
The aim of the meeting was to learn about progress on the new secondary school, an infrastructure project that the educational community has been demanding for years. IES Las Viñas was designed for about 700 pupils, but currently has nearly 1,400, a situation that has forced the school to keep prefabricated classrooms for years and to adapt spaces such as the library, the cafeteria and the laboratory in order to hold lessons.
This Thursday’s cancellation once again delays the chance of obtaining direct explanations. The AMPAS now hope that the meeting on the 30th will go ahead and help clarify the state of the project and what timescales the education authorities are working to in order to meet the educational needs of the area.
