Parents of Voronezh school summoned to Investigative Committee
Parents said third-floor toilets were urgently replaced amid the scandal, apparently worse than first-floor facilities.
Desperate parents from School No. 30 continue to fight the system for their children’s right to study in decent conditions — both physical (not with leaky toilets and broken desks), and moral (with a principal who brooks no doubt about his competence and «doesn’t swear»). After mothers and fathers exposed the mess to the press, and we at Voronezh1.ru launched our journalistic investigation, it turned out — as I expected — the story has another layer: it was revealed that the city budget was handing out millions for the school’s repairs, inspectors of all ranks checked it regularly, yet nothing saved it from utter decay. I hope prosecutors will determine the reasons. And why, for all 19 years that Pavel Strepetov has sat in the principal’s office at School No. 30, everyone tolerated this state of affairs.
To keep prosecutors from getting bored, the parents, following my lead, also contacted the Information Centre of the Sledstvenny komitet (Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation — SKR) — asking for Alexander Bastrykin, who loves stories like this. A few days later they received a call inviting them to the district SKR office.
«They asked what we were trying to achieve»
You know, I can’t remember the last time I heard such happy voices: people suddenly realised that they and their children matter to someone «important». Emotions afterwards — from one of the mothers:
«The investigator questioned us in great detail — when and where we complained, what was done in response. We answered honestly — with dates and names. We told how at the end of August we found the principal in his office in a strange state — and then he suddenly disappeared, and education department inspectors during working hours did not find him on site: he suddenly went on sick leave. The investigator made notes. And at the end — very humanly — she asked: what do you actually want? We told her plainly: to remove the principal. If everything here in Voronezh gets swept under the rug — we’ll write a collective complaint to Alexander Bastrykin and send it to the media, we’ll go on Andrey Malakhov’s show! And «“don’t like it — transfer your child to another school”»… Why? This is our neighbourhood school. We believe it is unacceptable — that an educational institution should be run by a person who has allowed everything to fall into a deplorable state, who uses obscene language in front of parents — women! — and… let’s say, is frequently ill.»
Pavel Leonidovich Strepetov’s condition is indeed worrying: he has been on sick leave since last week. And, as luck would have it, he fell ill just when the mayor’s office — following its inspection and our reports — decided to terminate his employment contract. I suspect the illness may be connected to Article 81 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, which forbids an employer from dismissing a subordinate on the employer’s initiative while the worker is «temporarily unable to work».
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«We left the investigator with mixed feelings,» the mother said, her voice showing bewilderment. «She didn’t really tell us anything — what they are doing or what they plan to do. Maybe it isn’t proper to discuss this work with every random person who turns up. But it still feels like we’re wasting time.»
I understand them — these moms and dads. On 26 September, to be safe they also filed a complaint with the Upravlenie Rospotrebnadzora po Voronezhskoy oblasti (Rospotrebnadzor — Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing), attaching photos and videos of the school interiors. Before the start of the school year an inspector had visited School No. 30 but did not spot anything serious — nothing that would justify an official order — did not notice. Parents hoped their images might show more. To strengthen their case they wrote about «unsanitary conditions» and «noncompliance with epidemiological norms». When on 8 October they tried to learn the outcome of their complaint and what measures were being taken…
A still frame from Rospotrebnadzor’s material shows part of the school interior.
«We couldn’t get through to the Voronezh office, and on the federal hotline they said that because we filed on 26 September — we’ll get an answer on 26 October. They have 30 days under the law. And the fact that in that time children could pick up some infection in these conditions — the law doesn’t care?»
There are no new Rospotrebnadzor checks of School No. 30 in the consolidated register of the Prosecutor General’s Office (Genprokuratura), but there is still plenty of time before 26 October. Along the regional ministry of education line — likewise — and they may be busy planning another «mega» school into which a couple of budgetary billions can be neatly poured. And how the unpretentious Voronezh «SOSH s VAI» (ordinary public school) became a reflection of the system’s underside — read and watch here.
