“Our children can no longer sleep”… In Les Mureaux, the parents of students occupy the town hall to be heard

2023-06-16 01:50:33

Surreal scene this Thursday evening in Les Mureaux (Yvelines). About fifty parents of students decided to occupy the premises of the town hall by singing “La Marseillaise” after a meeting that turned sour.

They had come to seek answers following rumors reporting the postponement of the next school year in the brand new Léo-Lagrange school center. More than 400 students, including many siblings in kindergarten and primary, are to be assigned there at the beginning of September 2023. Except that the work on the establishment, which will have cost 16.7 million euros, will not be completed on time…

“This time, the blow does not pass”

“We learn about it by word of mouth ten days before the holidays, it’s unacceptable,” says Assia, mother of four children. “Our children can’t sleep anymore, they are depressed,” adds her friend Imane. “They put the cart before the horse by having a new school map validated at the beginning of March taking into account the opening of Léo-Lagrange”, annoys Fatima, parent delegate to Jean Zay school.

A petition launched this Thursday morning had already collected nearly 800 signatures in the evening. “Usually, the parents are rather calm in Les Mureaux, they are taken for sheep except that this time, the blow does not pass…”, summarizes Omar, father of a pupil of CE2.

The Léo Lagrange center must accommodate more than 400 pupils from the city divided into 20 kindergarten and primary classes.

During the evening (crisis) meeting, the municipality first confirmed the impossibility of opening the Léo-Lagrange center due to a lack of materials. She also proposed a plan B as a new distribution of young students who set fire to the powder.

Under pressure, the municipality agrees to work on a status quo

The stumbling block related, in particular, to a solution of recourse, leading to the Jean-Jaurès school located in the Musicians district and closed for several years following the flooding of the sector. Even if the establishment, which served as a screening center during the health crisis linked to Covid 19, has undergone work, its distance from the current schools has caused an outcry.

Finally, around 9:30 p.m., the municipal teams gave in under pressure and accepted the principle of studying a return to the status quo for the start of the school year in September. The mayor (DVG) François Garay, absent this Thursday, and the academic inspection gave an appointment Monday morning to the parent delegates to work on “this priority option”, according to the city.