He considers the coalition to be necessary, to promote that public centers with on-site kitchens are responsible for preparing the menus offered “in all the centers supported with public funds”. They estimate that a firm commitment to school canteens as a public service would promote “both the quality of food received by users and the circular economy, employment linked to the territory and the release of local products from farmers and ranchers from Castilla. and Leon”.
For United We Can, the school canteen is “a public service that offers vulnerable families the possibility of accessing healthy food” and highlights that this service is used daily by at least 43,000 schoolchildren in the 521 existing school canteens in the public educational centers. They believe that the Junta de Castilla y León, even at the cost of contradicting itself, pursues the outsourcing of a service that should not be “a complement of an educational nature”, but should be seen as “part of the educational process of students and that, in turn, its free and universal character is guaranteed”.
The left-wing coalition points out that most of the new educational centers are already built without a kitchen “with an office that houses only a refrigerator and oven to reheat food” and that this format meets “the frontal opposition of families”. United We Can recall that the Confederation of Federations of Associations of Fathers and Mothers of Castilla y León (CONFAPACAL) and the Company Committees of the various provinces have denounced that they see in the privatization of public places in school canteens “a precariousness of the working conditions and worse food service”.
Image: Pablo Fernández, on the right, in Aranda de Duero during the last electoral campaign. / BC