Dilapidated high schools in Ile-de-France: Pécresse blames the perpetrators of deliberate damage

The LR president of the Ile-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, criticized for the dilapidation of certain high schools, particularly in Seine-Saint-Denis, promised Thursday March 28 to systematically pursue the perpetrators of deliberate damage, a position denounced by the teachers.

“When an elevator is damaged, when a wall is tagged, when a false ceiling tile is deliberately broken, there will be a complaint,” she said in the regional council’s standing committee.

“From now on, the region will no longer let anything pass,” assured Ms. Pécresse, estimating that this voluntary damage “is becoming more widespread in Ile-de-France”, without giving quantified details.

“I will not allow a certain number of high schools where we have invested crazy sums to be degraded,” said the former LR presidential candidate.

She notably took the example of the "arson in the toilets" of the Blaise-Cendrars high school in Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis), whose dilapidation was denounced by high school students and four teachers in a video that went viral on the network. social TikTok.

This sequence, viewed 2,9 million times, also prompted a reminder of the rules from the teachers concerned on March 15.

In this high school, the door of a repaired elevator "lasted a quarter of an hour", declared its vice-president in charge of high schools, James Chéron, regretting that the board of directors refused the installation of a video surveillance in front of this elevator.

“The high school entrance hall which leaks every time it rains, the two photocopiers not replaced, the position of territorial agent not filled since September, I wanted to know if it was the fault of the students?” denounced Clément Bernard, mathematics teacher at Blaise-Cendras high school, representing Snes-FSU 93.

"There is clearly contempt. The region says it is not aware of the problems but since Pécresse was elected, no representative has ever come to the high school board of directors while the Region occupies a legal position,” assured the teacher who has been in office for five years.

Mr. Chéron recognized the presence of “one or a few rats, from time to time” within the premises of the establishment of this popular town.

But “the high schools which have been cited” as dilapidated by the left-wing opposition “are all subject to global treatment”, underlined Mr. Chéron.

“At the time when the left was in power, the region invested 350 million per year in high schools. This year, it’s a billion euros,” he recalled.