Hundreds of teachers and students of a rundown Armenian school boycotted classes on Tuesday to again demand urgent repairs of its facilities.
The public school in Ashtarak, a town 30 kilometers northwest of Yerevan, has two buildings constructed in Soviet times. One of them is dilapidated and disused, while the other is too small to adequately accommodate the school’s 600 students. It is also in need of new furniture.
The schoolteachers protested against a grave lack of space and decaying facilities there when they went on a one-day strike in May. They failed to force the Armenian government to allocate funds needed for the repairs.
The teachers said on Tuesday that they will not resume their work until the government acts on their demands. They said the government should at least provide more adequate premises for their youngest students aged between 6 and 10.
Most parents of these and the students backed the strike action, saying that their children will boycott the classes indefinitely.
“There are no normal toilets, no canteen, you can’t call it a 21st century school,” one of them told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). “What do our provincial administration and education ministry think? Would they send their kids to such a school?”
“I’ve been working in this school for 21 years and I’ve been hearing promises for 21 years,” said one teacher. “But nothing has been done.”
The school principal, Grisha Gevorgian, sought to justify the protest. “People don’t trust me anymore because I was deceived [by the authorities] and then deceived them,” he said.
A senior official from the Ministry of Education visited the Ashtarak school later in the day. The official, Ashot Arshakian, claimed that Gevorgian has saved some of the budgetary funds allocated to the school in recent years and could have spent them on refurbishing it. The principal strongly denied that, saying that the school has actually been underfunded by the government.
Ashot Simonian, the recently appointed governor of the surrounding Aragatsotn province, also met with the protesting staff and students. He said he too is concerned about the poor condition of the school and is lobbying the government to set aside additional funds for it in the 2018 state budget.
Last year, students of a school in an Aragatsotn village also boycotted classes to protest against similarly poor conditions. The government scrambled to provide funds for its urgent reconstruction.