Saint-Martin teachers strike

This Thursday, February 1, 2024, around forty primary and secondary teachers met in the Galisbay parking lot to express their dissatisfaction with the reductions in resources and to bring their grievances to the vice-rector, Harry Christophe.

With a particularly sustained movement in the 1st degree, Jérémie Huot, representative of Se-Unsa, confided to us before the start of the action: “We decided as an inter-union to hold this gathering, not a demonstration, which will be followed by a delegation to the national education services and the vice-rector to express our dissatisfaction with the preparation for the next school year 2024-2025. We are in the period of hourly allocations, budgetary uses and the number of hours which are very worrying at the national level. This really proves a desire to increase class numbers and eliminate resources, what we call 'selling out public schools', we are right in the middle of it. And the 'formless' reform of the level groups which still does not have a decree, (...) many establishments are opposed to this announcement. We have the problem of overcrowded classes even though we are a fragile public with many non-native speakers (…). Instead of using the demographic decline to benefit from reducing numbers, the academic authorities are using it to put us under pressure, with increasingly overcrowded classes and job cuts.” On the secondary side, which has 30% of strikers, Laurent Bayly, local representative of the Snes-Fsu teachers' union, declared: "We are announcing something and in concrete terms we are doing the opposite, instead of increasing the means, we are going to lower them . Since the Prime Minister and the President (Macron editor's note) like war metaphors, education, according to Gabriel Attal, is the mother of battles, the government sends us to fight the mother of battles on scooters claiming that they are light armored vehicles when we need heavy armored vehicles. Even this rearmament is complete nonsense and we will bring this to the attention of the vice-rector. Because specifically in the academy and in Saint-Martin, there are additional resources to be put in place.” With 5 schools closed this February 1 (Eliane Clark, J.Anselme, Elie Gibs, E.Choisy, E. Halley), Valérie Boucaut, representative of Snuipp-Fsu, specifies that there were 17 strikers out of 18 at the O.Arrondel school, 24 out of 23 at Clair St.Maximin, 13 out of 14 at Simeone Trott, 19 out of 25 at H.Williams, 5 out of 9 at G.Rogers, 12 out of 25 at A.Hanson, 5 out of 11 at J .Beaupère, 15 out of 24 at MA.Leydet and 3 out of 5 at MA Richards: “We are talking here about 52 position closures, 6 class closures at SXM and one at SBH. This strike concerns the cancellation and closure of positions, the increase in salaries, the status for AESH (accompanying students with disabilities, editor's note) and full-time contracts, and the improvement of working conditions. . _VX