Situation with 13th Primary School has come to a head

All the misfortune surrounding school facilities in Corfu in a single case? All of it? Of course not. The cases troubling both the local community and the authorities are many. However, the situation of the 13th Primary School in Kotsela shows in the clearest way how a long-standing problem can reach a dead end. The demands of the property owner — which, as noted, are longstanding and have been expressed for years — remain high.

The building — or, to be precise, the house, since a residence operates above the school — requires restoration work estimated to cost tens of thousands of euros. According to the municipal authorities, the owner considers these works a prerequisite for agreeing to a new extension of the lease. And of course, alongside these interventions, the issue of increasing the rent has also been raised.

The municipality is searching for an alternative solution, but so far no available building that meets the specifications for school use has been identified. This is a familiar problem in Corfu Town, where the lack of suitable facilities makes any attempt to relocate school units difficult.

As a result, the school’s approximately 90 young pupils may face a difficult prospect. Either they will all have to be moved to another building — if one is found — or the school community will be broken up and the pupils distributed among nearby primary schools in the town. It is a scenario that parents and teachers say they do not even want to contemplate.

But this is far from the island’s only school facilities problem. A similar case is that of the Phaeakon Junior High, which is housed in a building that was once a hotel, constructed in the 1970s. The use of such buildings for educational needs highlights the long-standing difficulties Corfu faces in finding suitable spaces for schooling.

Even if a comprehensive programme to address school facilities were to begin today, bureaucracy would remain another major obstacle. It is telling that for the otherwise mature project of constructing a new school in Kontokali, around 55 administrative acts were required in order to issue the Presidential Decree that sets out the urban-planning conditions — a decree that is still pending.

The case of the 13th Primary School, therefore, is not simply a lease dispute. It is another episode in a long history of delays, shortages and deadlocks surrounding school facilities in Corfu. And as long as the solutions remain temporary, the problem returns again and again.

GIORGOS KATSAITIS