• The town hall and the National Education plan to close the Port-Garaud kindergarten, one of the smallest schools in Toulouse with only two classes.

  • To justify this possible closure, the town hall evokes a drop in the number of staff at the start of the school year.

  • Parents and unions, who advocate a redrawing of the map to increase the number of staff, have launched a petition and will demonstrate on Saturday.

“It's a bit of a cold shower, because there is attachment to this school”.

Aurélien Speller, like the majority of parents of kindergarten students in Port-Garaud, Toulouse, learned last week of the plan to close the school, which now has two double-level classes.

Today, it has around forty students, "with a project of real diversity since the school welcomes children from the Le Tournil home and has built a real project", assures its director, Odile Shen, in office for sixteen years. in this establishment.

But, with the departure of 19 pupils in CP class next year, and low forecasts of new children in the sector, the town hall considers that "it is not possible to have a school with a single class, for questions of equity”, pleads the deputy mayor for education, Marion Lalane de Laubadère.

General decline in kindergarten

This downward trend in numbers is not only found in the downtown areas, where gentrification has not yet had such an impact on the arrival of new parents as in Paris.

This is a basic trend across all kindergarten age groups in France, and in Toulouse it is 2.5% each year on average.

Even if the arrival of new populations in certain neighborhoods in full development, north of Toulouse, means that schools are opened in certain areas.

Parents wonder why this announcement is made in February when kindergarten announcements are only made in March at the town hall.

“The sectorization can be extended to a few streets.

If they wanted to maintain, we could play on the school map, these are choices that are made by the town hall, because, for them, it is less premises to manage.

We know the advantage of small structures in terms of the school climate, the bigger the structure the harder it is to manage, we have seen it with the Covid”, reacts for her part Marie Gascard, from the teacher union SNUIpp who regrets to see this school closed.

Expand the sector

“I understand that it is painful.

If I increased the sectorization of Port-Garaud, it would only concern the pupils of small section and it would take at least twenty.

It's a bet”, justifies the education assistant who assures that everything will be “done so that it goes smoothly”.

The parents, themselves, do not despair of tipping this decision for the moment conditional in permanent maintenance.

“Until June there may be registrations.

We do not see the point of closing local structures to overload others, ”argues Aurélien Speller who has a child attending school in Port-Garaud.

With the collective of other parents, he launched a petition which has already gathered 1,000 signatures.

And on Saturday, at 4 p.m., he will demonstrate in Place Lafourcade to voice his opposition to this decision.

Paris

Paris: 6,000 fewer schoolchildren in primary and nursery schools this year

Paris

Paris: Households are fleeing the capital to go ever further

  • Child

  • Closing

  • Toulouse

  • National Education

  • school

  • Town hall

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