Parents and Guardians Association of Kythera High School: «Fight to the end. The students’ strike continues indefinitely.»

Ο Parents and Guardians Association of the Kythira Junior High School in collaboration with the General Parents' Meeting and the 15-Member Student Council decide unanimously and by a unanimous vote the continuation of students' absence from classes indefinitely. This decision was made in response to the unprecedented teacher shortages facing the Kythira Junior High School, as well as allegations of abusive practices by the Piraeus Secondary Education Directorate.

His presence Director of Secondary Education in Piraeus, Mr. Anastasopoulos, in Kythira, it had been stated that the goal would be to normalize the situation. However, according to the Association, instead of resolving the problems, the Director accused the parents of providing false information and threatened to lawsuits and referral to the prosecutor.

The Association alleges that vacancies in classes are being filled by mandatory transfers of teachers from other schools and with mandatory overtime of the teachers at Kythira High School, which creates an unstable educational environment for the students. Parents and students say that a strike is the only option until all teaching vacancies are permanently filled. Read the press release:

PRESS RELEASE – PROTEST STATEMENT

TO: ALL RELEVANT AUTHORITIES

Honourable gentlemen,

The Parents’ and Guardians’ Association of the students of Kythira High School, the General Assembly of Parents of Kythira Junior High School, and the 15-member Student Council of Kythira Junior High School,

DECIDED UNANIMOUSLY AND BY A VOTE OF ALL MEMBERS,

the continuation of the students’ strike indefinitely.

The Piraeus Secondary Education Directorate, represented by the Director himself, Mr. Anastasopoulos, in Kythira—while claiming that the sole purpose of his visit wasto normalize the situation and definitively resolve the problem facing the school in Kythira due to the unprecedented shortage of teachers, acts abusively toward teachers and attacks them by imposing sanctions.

Specifically, he insists that the evidence submitted to him to date is false and claims that the Board of Directors is attempting to create a certain impression, publicly threatening to sue and refer to the District Attorney all the parents who simply stated the obvious.

He then states that he fills in the gaps in the curriculum with urgent travel teachers, who are already appointed other schools in the region, as well as with  mandatory, which he described as temporary, overtime of the already overburdened teachers at the co-located Kythira High School.

Under these circumstances, our children cannot to follow a consistent schedule, when they are forced, on a weekly or monthly basis, to switch between the temporary teachers assigned by each high school principal.

With the provisional and the dogmatic It now maintains that these measures have filled the gaps and boasts how he resolved within a few hours the issue that has been troubling us for months. Just as the Minister of Education himself had been complaining in the same way in the past.

In closing, imposes sanctions the students themselves, who had already stopped attending their classes because counting all absences, intimidating them into dropping their opposition to us.

The decision to continue the children's boycott is now one-way street for the parents and children of Kythira, indefinitely, or at least until the situation is truly normalized and all vacancies in teaching specialties and class hours are permanently filled.

We, as parents, remain steadfast in our struggle and will not give in to blackmail that only harms our children.

It is the duty of all those in positions of responsibility to respect our young people and to stop mocking us by operating within the framework of a legitimacy that  which they conceal the immorality of their decisions.

We are writing to you once again to ask that you draw your own conclusions and take the necessary action by conducting the appropriate investigation, so that those responsible for the above may finally assume their responsibilities.

The President The Secretary

Myropi Nikopoulou, Eleni Stathi