Gates will remain closed at the start of the next school year. The Grand-Est regional council adopted Thursday a disputed deliberation of “new distribution” of training and high schools, which provides for the closure of nine establishments, despite the opposition of elected officials from the territories concerned.
The deliberation relates to nine projects providing, in five cases, for a grouping of several high schools in the same city on a single site, or, for four smaller municipalities, the transfer of training to a high school in another city, with closure from the original institution.
The deliberation presents this development as “necessary”, linked to the “demographic reduction” which will be observed in high schools “from 2025”, and to the “energy crisis” which increases bills and imposes “to optimize the ‘occupancy’ of the building stock, which is ‘old and energy-intensive’.
If the regional council, with a majority on the right and chaired by Franck Leroy (ex-Horizons), adopted the text on Thursday, the deliberation was rejected by all the opposition groups. “High schools should not pay for your lack of anticipation”, scolded Eliane Romani, of the EELV group, on Twitter. “You find out that some of our high schools are energy sieves. But why didn’t you isolate them before?
“A calculator policy that makes no sense”
“The closing of a high school is a city that tips over on the wrong side: it is families who do not stay, fewer jobs, and tomorrow closures of public services”, estimated Laurent Jacobelli (RN). “It’s a policy of the calculator that makes no sense.”
“With the same criteria, we could close other high schools, the choices that have been made do not make sense,” lamented Christophe Choserot, from the centrist group. “We have the impression that Franck Leroy is locked in by decisions that his predecessor (Jean Rottner, who resigned in December) had taken even though he knew he was going to leave”.
For the territories concerned, “the disappointment is enormous”, sighs Marc Cecatto, mayor of Landres (Meurthe-et-Moselle), who should see his vocational school close in 2025. “It is an essential tool for the influence of our basin of life. It was an asset for families to come and settle in the area. It was the budgetary point of view that prevailed, the region considers that the renovation would cost too much, but the building belongs to them, one can wonder why they let things deteriorate”.