The Xaló Town Council has taken the Education Department to court because the council is taking charge of the cleaning and maintenance services of the new institute. These charges are the responsibility of the Generalitat.
In this sense, the council denounces political persecution of the municipality for two main reasons. The first, due to the refusal of the Education Department to face the expenses derived from the maintenance of the institute that were its responsibility last year. The second, due to the closure of the institute model that allowed students to study in the same centre from 2 to 16 years of age.
This model is the majority in the concerted educational centres but in the case of Xaló, the Generalitat decided, after the registration, to convert the centre’s institute into a section of the IES Josep Iborra in Benissa. “We have confidence in both the teaching staff in Benissa and in Xaló, but closing a centre by email in July with the registration fee and without any planning is not the way for a serious government to act,” lamented the councillor for education, Eugenia Mestre.
Neither tender nor forecast
With the abrupt closure of the centre model and its transfer of management to Benissa, the Generalitat Valenciana was unable to foresee any cleaning service, so since November 2023 the department has disclaimed its maintenance as owner and builder of the centre.
Faced with this fact, the city council contacted the educational inspection, acknowledging that this service had not been planned. To prevent the centre’s students from the towns of Xaló, Alcalalí and Llíber from not being able to start the course, the Xaló City Council decided to take on the cleaning. “We have had to enter the building to carry out the cleaning during all this time and we continue to do so. But the serious thing is that no solution has been communicated to us so far,” said the councillor. In addition, the Department of Education already owed the city council the cost of maintenance for the previous course and this debt continues to increase today.
Legal action
In this situation, the Xaló Town Hall has filed a claim before the High Court of Justice of the Valencian Community to demand the maintenance of the centre from the previous year and does not rule out taking new legal action in view of the abandonment of the current service. “We are going back to the past, we are going back to the years in which the Generalitat did not assume its payments in the school centres and it is worrying that the town hall has to reduce other items to assume expenses that are not our responsibility,” warned Eugenia Mestre.
School nursing service
In addition, the town hall also criticises that the ministry has announced the launch of the school nursing service in the educational centre. But instead of hiring new staff, they have cut hours from the town’s nursing service to be able to provide that service. “It is the same service that we already had in the Health Centre and that is absolutely collapsed,” Mestre lamented.
