In response to student-led protests in Oct 2019 the Santiago municipal gov ended the AY early for two of ‘s most politically active public high schools, Instituto Nacional & INBA.

to the 2020 AY, school was only in session for a few wks before COVID-19 closures (1/)

Schools have been closed for ~2mo now & the municipality still refuses to invest in Zoom accts for students, teachers, admins, & families to meet/talk/be together.

For the past year the muni has been denying school communities co-presence as an appalling political strategy. (2/)

Municipal govs in Stgo treat public schools as a threat. In the mos leading up to the 2019 estallido students, teachers, & parents at IN were relentlessly harassed by politicians in the media threatening to end the AY bc of student protests & police in/around/on top of the school

The gov feels so threatened by these schools’ co-presence-ing that they sacrifice 1000s of students’ education, access to social services, & community...for what? I literally don’t know. Just to try to keep students from organizing so they can avoid listening to their demands?

& while the muni took the big symbolic action of closing IN & INAB, their commitment to abolishing co-presence was clear in tons of schools after the onset of the estallido.

ex: the Stgo muni school where I do research re-opened in Nov to a very dangerous political climate

w/o going into detail, the school community and the surrounding small business community have decades of tension that—in the context of weeks of financial losses caused by police & military violence, riots, & lack of transportation—came to a head when the gov re-opened the school

Within a week of re-opening there was an incident where a group students who were organizing a non-violent protest in front of the school were attacked by adults w/ weapons, there were verbal threats to their lives, & a teacher was assaulted while trying to protect students.

The principal called the police during the incident & they didn’t come. The school asked the municipality send some sort of security to help mitigate the tension b/t the school & businesses & ensure students & teacher safety & nope, nothing.

This school, only 2 mos earlier, finalized a protocol for alerting parents when their children have to emergency evacuate the school because of police tear gassing the campus. The police come to tear gas/assault/and shoot students so often that they have a fucking protocol for it

But they couldn’t show up to help ensure that the school community could exist together safely.

For a variety of reasons, the school wasn’t really able to stay open & functioning after that. It was similar to what I think is happening in US schools rn where teachers are desperately trying to figure out how to pass and graduate students and just survive.

I can’t stop thinking about the week that it was open &there weren’t normal classes or attendance bc of no but teachers organized spaces for students to process the violence they were experiencing, their parents losing work, & their not being able to leave the house for weeks

For many students the school reopening was the first time they were allowed to leave the house since the estallido started . They talked about how much they missed coming to school. & about how scary, unstable, and isolating everything felt . & how angry they were.

The campus was able to open again for students to come for lunch & to just be there for a bit in December while teachers worked/graded before summer break. And kids came just to sit around w/ each other, decorate a Christmas tree with teachers, play soccer with teachers.

This thread isn’t going anywhere else I’m just angry & sad that any gov anywhere is not doing absolutely everything to ensure that K-12 schools can be virtually co-present right now.

But I’m also not surprised bc they were trying to keep school communities apart before too.