“We have rights! We have rights!” These shouts merged with the honking of bustling traffic along San José's Paseo Colón yesterday morning as children with disabilities and their parents protested outside the Ministry of Education to demand improvements to their school in the western suburb of Santa Ana.
The Santa Ana Special Learning Center, a public school, has about 120 students with various special needs, explained Kattia Mesén, the mother of an 11-year-old girl who suffers from an illness that has left her wheelchair-bound. The school is not fully equipped to meet these children's needs, and a group of parents are lobbying for improvements such as a roof over the walkway between buildings, a playground and additional classrooms.
The parents have raised money to do some of these projects themselves, but the Public Health Ministry, which owns the school property, has denied them permission to go ahead, Mesén said.
“We have a right to be heard, and our children have the right to a fair education,” she said, explaining that the parents' group is asking the Public Education Ministry to coordinate with the Health Ministry to reach some kind of agreement that would allow improvements to be made.
“We're not asking that everything be given to us to create adequate conditions. We've even done everything we can to come up with our own resources, but we can't use them because we aren't authorized,” she said.
Frustrated at the lack of response to letters they sent to the Education Ministry, the parents decided to go straight to the source yesterday. Pushing their children in wheelchairs, they held signs stating their cause and chanted up to the ministry's offices.
Two representatives from the group went up the stairs to meet with Education Ministry representatives who said they would look into the case but did not promise any immediate actions, Mesén said. |
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