The education minister is declared for closing schools in Drenas: Wrong Decision

Minister of Education, Science and Technology Shyqi, Shyqiri Bytyqi, has today received parents' representatives from the Drinas municipality who have complained at MAST to the Drenas Town's decision to close schools, arguing that there are not sufficient numbers of students and budgetary opportunities to function these schools.

Concerned with this Komuna decision, the parents announced to the Minister Bytyqi that the divided parallel of the school “Fhote Galica”, which has not opened the doors for its students on September 3rd, numbers 116 students from first grade to eighth grade.

They expressed the concern of all parents and asked for MAST's help to have this school reopen the doors, that is, cancel the decision and start the job.

While, Minister Bytyqi stressed that this has been a pressing decision The DKA in Drenas, however, said this is the competence of the municipality, even though MAST is interested in helping the school reopen.

The minister explained that in the DKA decision in Drenas it is intended to be responsible for the functioning of three parallels in the village of Godce, Djordjeca and the Muliqi neighbourhood, basing the decision on problems that are not sustainable and unrealistic.

“MAST from its budget provides no budgetary means for any municipality, school or parallels, because each municipality has the government grant provided for education, which is shared by the Ministry of Finance, so the DKA's request for additional budgets from MAST is illegal”, he said.

The minister stressed the fact that the main responsibility for planning, employment and management of schools are the municipalities themselves, in this case the Crenasis Community.

The “Scholl, which has been closed, has subsequently been fusiond with parallels, has been planned with the preliminary budget, which means that the reasoning that it is closing for lack of budget is unsustainable”, he said.

Minister Bytyqi also mentioned that the budget based on the medium-term distribution of expenditures approved by the Grant Commission, the amount of the pre-priced budget for this category is 6,070,243.00 euros, which means that the Drensian Community for this category has a budget increase of 215,729 euros for 2019.

Minister Bytyqi said that the number of employees in the Drenas DK for 2018 has been 964, while for 2019 it is 977, so 13 more employed in education, approved at the Special Grant Commission, so he stressed that the reasoning for the absence of workers is unstable.

Similarly, the minister stressed that the decision was made The DKA was issued on August 31st 2018, while the 3rd school year has begun. Thus, this decision has been made without any training campaigns for parents and students.

Minister Bytyqi said MAST will also officially submit the Drenas municipality letter in hopes that this request will be reviewed and students will return to their school.