After Delfina Gómez sit-in, deputies will seek to restore benefits to full-time schools

In the Chamber of Deputies, the Education Commission approved the opinion with a point of agreement on the reinstatement of the extended hours and food service components in the “School is Our” program after the federal government announced the abolition of the Full-Time Schools program.

Thus, legislators seek to urge the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), in charge of Delfina Gómez, to make public awareness of the mechanisms for incorporating the components of extending hours and meals.

This program benefited 3.6 million girls and boys in basic education and represented an opportunity for working mothers to avoid leaving their jobs. Schools offered between 1.5 and 3.5 hours of extracurricular classes in disciplines such as music, art, sports and foreign languages, mainly English.

In addition, the deputies intend that the SEP collaborate jointly with the working group to review the Full-Time Schools program, after the federal government announced through the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF) its elimination.

Although Delfina Gómez publicly stated that she would meet with legislators to address the issue, she did not attend the work table installed on March 22 in San Lázaro, and later the office of the head of the SEP requested more time to define a new appointment.

Civil organizations warned that this educational policy is a social setback, since they pointed out that almost 70% of schools operating under this modality are in areas of social vulnerability and that the population benefited was mostly those in rural and indigenous areas.

They also pointed out that these schools offered parents, mainly women, the possibility of keeping their children in safe spaces while their working days ended. So one consequence could be that some parents consider abandoning or cutting their productive activities.

In addition, specialists agreed that longer time in schools allowed students to obtain a higher level of learning, resulting in a social equalizer.

According to assessments by the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy and Development (CONEVAL) conducted from 2007 to 2017, Full-time Schools were the best model of equity to avoid school backwardness.

After the disappearance of the program became official on February 28, 2022, arguing that this system lent itself to acts of corruption, on March 7, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured that the support given directly to societies of mothers and fathers could be implemented by the families of girls, boys and adolescents who attend this type of school.

“We chose to give resources directly to mothers' and fathers' societies for everything that has to do with education in the classroom for maintenance and also for food and whatever they consider,” said the head of the executive.

The Secretary of Education explained that the resources of the Full-Time Schools will be used for the maintenance of schools, because after an assessment by the SEP of the needs of institutions, she warned that some facilities lack water, sanitary facilities and other basic needs.

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