A concerning hole has opened in the wall between the two doors of the barrack used as a morning classroom and meeting room for the Parent-Teacher Association at Marqués de Santa Cruz school in El Puerto de Santa María. One of the 538 children studying at the public school in El Puerto de Santa María decided to put up a sign saying “House of the Tooth Fairy”. The rusty room, plagued with problems and with rotting floors, took a while for the innocent joke to be removed. However, it is taking much longer for this module and two others where students attend the dining room, music classes, or robotics classes to be replaced. The school in Cadiz has been waiting for up to 37 years for a solution, as reported by the parents’ association.
Former students who are now parents are waiting for a solution for the school, located in the Naval Settlement, a residential area on the outskirts of El Puerto, dedicated to officers and subofficers of the Spanish Navy stationed in the Rota Base. “There are parents who were here as children, have now returned as adults with children, and cannot believe that this is still here,” explains the vice president of the parents’ association, who is also a mother of four children studying at the school. The interior deficiencies of the barracks are pointed out, with areas where floors have disappeared, lights that work intermittently and give shocks, toilets that constantly get clogged, and window blinds that fall apart frequently. The rust on the exterior metal has become sharp enough that students could cut themselves.
The outdated modules cannot meet safety standards, according to the parents’ association. The school has repeatedly requested a technical assessment of the state of the prefabricated modules from the Department of Education of the Junta de Andalucía in Cádiz and the Andalusian Public Education Agency. The parents claim that in 2019, the department committed to solving the problem and even had a budget allocation and a project to replace the three modules with a multi-purpose building that has been awaited for over three decades. However, the project seems to have been abandoned, much to the annoyance of the parents. The Department of Education in Cádiz cites a lack of investment for previous decades as the reason for not yet addressing the situation at Marqués de Santa Cruz.
The excuses from the government enrage the parents even further, as they cannot understand why their school has been waiting for so many years for improvements. Despite housing activities and dining services for 538 students from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., the three modules also cater to the nearby Francisco Javier de Uriarte high school. Changes in family relocations may contribute to the lack of continuity in addressing the school’s issues. The current parents’ association is determined to break the cycle of meetings and promises for improvements. The dilapidated barracks of Marqués de Santa Cruz have been there since the school was established in 1987/1988, under an agreement between the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Ministry of Defense.
The parents are organizing to raise funds for installing awnings in the schoolyard to provide shade for the children as the summer approaches. In two months, the school will miss having a venue to celebrate the graduation of the eldest students. Despite being a great school with dedicated teachers and a sense of family, the neglect of the facilities is disheartening. The situation at Marqués de Santa Cruz is deemed a pity by the parents, who feel completely abandoned and frustrated.
