Parents Near Volgograd Decry Renovation Delays at Two Schools
In Volzhsky, the renovation deadlines for a second secondary school — MOU Secondary School No. 13 — have been crudely missed. The work began at the end of 2023 and was supposed to be finished by March 2025, but classes have still not resumed at the educational institution.
Parents whose children are temporarily studying in the building of School No. 1 described the emerging emergency situation. That school is also being closed for major renovations starting February 1.
From a video appeal by parents of MOU Secondary School No. 13:
«Our school was closed for repairs three years ago. All students were distributed to other schools in the city. We have a written response from the education committee stating that our children will be taught in schools No. 1 and No. 2 while the building is being renovated. We understood this situation.
As of today, it is the third academic year that our children have been forced to study not in their own school, but in the building of another, temporarily provided one, while School No. 13 is under repair. However, we have now been informed that the primary school building is closing for repairs, and all our children are being redistributed to other schools.«
The major renovation of School No. 13 building cost 114.7 million rubles (approximately $1.3 million at current rates). According to auction documentation, the winner was OMS LLC from Stavropol Krai, which agreed to perform the work for 114,737,776 rubles. It is known that the work started in January 2024 and is still not finished: the deadlines have been missed by almost 10 months. Meanwhile, the contractor verification system «Kontur.Focus» indicates that the contract for the school«s major renovation has been fulfilled.
According to parents, pupils of School No. 13 have been forced to take their children to schools No. 1 and No. 2 for all these three years. And if people were tolerating the missed deadlines for their home school«s renovation, the closure of another educational institution prompted them to record a video appeal.
«My son is in the fifth grade, my daughter is in the third. And both will be assigned to different schools. Today there is a meeting to which the principal has been invited, but no one believes she will come,» says one of the parents.
MOU Secondary School No. 2, according to parents, will stop operating from February 1: the administration has already found a contractor who will restore the old building for 58.5 million rubles (approximately $650,000 at current rates). The pupils of the long-suffering School No. 13 are being assigned even farther away — to School No. 28, a place the outraged mothers and fathers have no desire to send their children.
«There are no shuttle buses stopping within walking distance there. However, there is a half-destroyed square nearby where it»s scary to walk even for adults in the evenings. The school cannot provide a bus either: they said they simply don«t have any.»
The V1.RU correspondent was unable to reach the principal of School No. 13: the reception said she was not in. The V1.RU editorial office asked the administration of Volzhsky to explain the reason for the missed renovation deadlines. A similar question was posed to the management of OMS LLC.
MOU Secondary School No. 13 is not the first school in Volzhsky where renovation deadlines have been missed. The administration is still trying to resolve the issue with the reconstruction of School No. 32 «Evrika-Razvitiye» (Eureka-Development), which became the center of a corruption scandal involving the embezzlement of a large sum of budget money. The work, judging by the state procurement website, has been ongoing since 2023. You can read more about it here.
