The Grand Est region votes to close nine high schools

Europe 1 with AFP 17:27 p.m., March 24, 2023, modified at 19:25 p.m., March 24, 2023

The regional council of the Grand Est has adopted a contested deliberation of "new distribution" of training and high schools, which provides for the closure of nine establishments, despite the opposition of the elected representatives of the territories concerned. The deliberation concerns nine projects providing, in five cases, for the grouping of several high schools in the same city on a single site, or, for four smaller municipalities, the transfer of training to a high school in another city, with closure of the establishment of origin.

>> Find all the newspapers of the Europe 1 editorial team in replay and podcast here

The deliberation presents as "necessary" this evolution, linked to the "demographic decrease" that will be observed in high schools "from 2025", and the "energy crisis" which increases bills and imposes "to optimize the occupancy" of the stock of buildings, "old and energy-intensive".

"A city that is tipping on the wrong side"

If the regional council, with a right-wing majority and chaired by Franck Leroy (ex-Horizons), adopted the text on Thursday, the deliberation was rejected by all opposition groups. "High schools should not pay for your lack of anticipation," said Eliane Romani, of the EELV group, on Twitter. "You discover that some of our high schools are energy sieves. But what have you isolated them before."

Intervention of @ElianeRomani_ to denounce the pseudo ecological arguments used by the majority.

If high schools are energy sieves, it is because they had to be isolated before!#SPMars23pic.twitter.com/DiIu6gZ1kB

— The Ecologists - Grand-Est (@GrandEstEcolo) March 23, 2023

"The closure of a high school is a city that falls on the wrong side: it is families that do not stay, jobs less, and tomorrow closures of public services," said Laurent Jacobelli (RN). "It's a calculator policy that makes no sense."

>> READ ALSO - Transformation of the professional high school: teachers and students fear losing hours of lessons

"With the same criteria, we could close other high schools, the choices that have been made do not make sense," lamented Christophe Choserot, of the centrist group. "We have the impression that Franck Leroy is locked in by decisions that his predecessor (Jean Rottner, who resigned in December) had taken even though he knew he was going to leave."

For the territories concerned, "the disappointment is enormous," sighs Marc Cecatto, mayor of Landres (Meurthe-et-Moselle), which should see its vocational high school close in 2025. "It is an essential tool for the influence of our living area. It was an asset for families to come and settle in the area. It is the budgetary point of view that has prevailed, the region considers that the renovation would be too expensive, but the building belongs to it, one can wonder why it has let things deteriorate."