Of the total 145 schools and pre-school education institutions of Chisinau municipality, 58 have a negative balance, most of these being from suburban settlements. The General Division of Education, Youth and Sport allocated over 25 million lei for remunerating employees and for maintenance in the second half of the school year, the Division’s head Rodica Gutu stated in the June 11meeting of officials of Chisinau services and divisions, IPN reports.
According to Rodica Gutu, among the causes for such a situation are the institutions’ incapacity to hire an accountant with a decent salary and the fact that these do not fully use the capacity of the owned buildings. The situation is the worse at nine institutions, which use only 25% of the buildings’ capacity. “In 2016, 32 primary and secondary education institutions, which is about 24% of the total, used up to 50% of the buildings’ capacity. This year the figure rose to 58,” stated the Division’s head. For 2018-2019, the Division will propose a plan for optimizing the units of the municipal school network and will suggest freeing five buildings of former kindergartens.
Rodica Gutu noted that the Division encourages the financing per student, but considers the administrative and financial decentralization can be successful only if the allocated payments fully cover the costs associated with the remuneration of employees, food, allocations to the social fund and other expenses.
Acting mayor of Chisinau Ruslan Codreanu said the municipality of Chisinau comes last in terms of the self-management of its education institutions, but it should be an example for districts. “When a building has a capacity of 1 000 students, but there are only 250, 200 or 150 students, the whole building should be maintained and salaries are paid to the entire teaching staff and the maintenance costs are for 1,000 students. These costs are covered with municipal budget funds, but this money could be used to set up physics and chemistry labs,” stated Ruslan Codreanu. He asked that the plan for optimizing the units of the municipal school network that will be proposed by the Division should be based on professional expertise.
