Meetings at the Department of Education where mobile phones are banned
According to the Administration, the devices must remain outside the room "to avoid distractions and maintain a serene work space".
PalmaIn the Department of Education, meetings where attendees are prohibited from bringing their mobile phones into the room are common. According to sources from the department, this measure is applied "to avoid distractions and maintain a serene work environment." "Especially when dealing with a sensitive topic, for confidentiality," adds Education. This practice, however, generates surprise and debate among parts of the educational community, who consider this level of restriction in institutional work spaces unusual.
In this regard, the director of the Technical Office of FAPA Mallorca (families), Miquel Àngel Guerrero, has publicly denounced these types of situations within the framework of meetings related to particularly sensitive issues. As he explains, one of these meetings took place to address the context generated by the reincorporation of Miquel Roldán, a teacher convicted of child molestation, to CEIP Son Pisà. Guerrero maintains that these types of decisions and the way meetings are managed generate “insecurity and lack of trust” among families, especially due to the sensitivity of the cases handled.
Information about minors
It should be borne in mind that within the Ministry of Education, files and situations affecting minors are usually managed, a particularly protected group that requires careful handling of information. This factor, according to sources from the department, helps to understand the need to establish certain control measures in meeting spaces, especially when discussing issues that may have legal, administrative, and personal repercussions.
In parallel, at the end of the previous legislature, the Ministry of Education convened a meeting without an agenda in which three unions participated –SIAU, STEI, and Alternativa–, in addition to the Director General of Teaching Staff, the head of Teaching Staff, and the head of the Legal Services department.
According to the statements of the general secretary of the SIAU union, Joan Crespi, upon entering the room “it was requested to hand over mobile devices to a secretary”, a request to which “all attendees agreed except for me”. The union leader states that he offered “to turn off the mobile in front of everyone to guarantee I would not use it”, but that the meeting organization insisted on the handover of the device.
In his account, the general secretary explains that, given his refusal to leave the phone, the head of Legal Services informed him that “he would not participate in the meeting if he had the device inside”. According to his words, he remained firm in his decision and finally the head of service left the room, which reduced the number of participants in the meeting.
In this way, the meeting continued with the three union representatives and two members of the Ministry, while the SIAU leader's phone was inside the room. During the meeting, according to his testimony, “very unfortunate and, in some cases, deniable statements were made”, a situation that he assures generated discomfort and concern among those present regarding the manners and content of the interventions.