The single school zone: when 'freedom' becomes inequality

There are moments in the day that define a town or city. In the mornings, when thousands of children and teenagers fill the streets on their way to school, they offer the truest reflection of our urban and educational model. Because school is not just a building: it is community, neighborhood, and equal opportunity. Now, the Regional Ministry of Education, controlled by the People's Party (PP) and supported by Vox, wants to dismantle this fundamental pillar of our society with a shocking lack of justification and recklessness. The proposal for a single school zone is not simply an administrative matter, but a direct threat to the true equity of the system.

President Prohens sells it to us as an expansion of 'freedoms'. But, in practice, who gets to choose? Who can afford more journeys, more time for work-life balance, and more logistical hassles? The reader has already guessed: when you eliminate proximity as a guiding principle, freedom becomes competition. And in this race, not all families start from the same point. This idea promotes more traffic, more accidents, and more pollution precisely when we should be going in the opposite direction: safe environments, active mobility, and restoring confidence in the streets. The single zone is not neutral; it is pure ideology, because it aims to reorganize daily life. It puts strain on towns, cities, and roads—enough already—and turns the school commute into a permanent mobility problem.

The educator Francesco Tonucci summarizes it thus: the dominance of the private car in cities is outdated and, above all, unbearable; municipalities have expelled children from public spaces and transformed them into hostile infrastructure. He insists that the failed city is the one that insists on designing itself solely for adults of working age, and not for children or vulnerable people. In 2016, I myself was writing in NOW Balearic Islands The chronicle of what the Italian made so clear during his visit to PalmaHe responded to the call from Palma City Council to recognize all the schools that were actively involved in expanding the network of safe routes to school. During the meeting, we were able to highlight the benefits of these initiatives: fostering proximity, student autonomy, and reducing unnecessary journeys in motor vehicles. It is terrible to see that all the work of entire school communities is now being buried by a reform that is anything but pedagogical. Perhaps it is because the far right is terrified that the relationships that begin in school will continue in the neighborhood; that students will learn from their immediate surroundings; and that the diversity of society will be reflected in the classroom.

But the worst thing is often what isn't immediately apparent: segregation. One of the main threats to education is the erosion of equal opportunities, shrinking public schools while expanding private ones. Single-district schools concentrate vulnerable students in some schools and privileged students in others, fueling academic disparities, differences in social interaction, and divergent life plans. When one school becomes synonymous with 'problems' and another with 'high standards,' the city begins to divide into two speeds. And then, surprisingly, there are early school dropout rates, families resigned to their fate, and teachers forced to perform miracles with increasingly scarce resources. School segregation reveals itself as a long-term breeding ground for inequality and urban discord. And, as if this were not enough, a new and particularly perverse ingredient is added: the reinstatement of the alumni criterion (giving extra points for previous family ties with the school), which has a single intention: to consolidate a 'natural selection' in the most sought-after schools and penalize newly arrived students or those without family networks.

The worrying thing is that all of this is being proposed without an impact assessment in terms of mobility, education, urban planning, and sociology. For this reason, the Socialists of Mallorca have unsuccessfully demanded prior technical reports before modifying the zoning. We cannot improvise with a decision that disrupts the mornings and afternoons of thousands of families and that could shape entire educational paths. Especially when the plenary session of the Mallorca School Council has explicitly voted against it, not to mention all the mandatory and current regulations that it violates: three European Council directives, four communications and resolutions from the European Commission, three European Parliament resolutions, and three national laws (the Organic Law on Education and the Sustainable Mobility Plans, both for the Balearic Islands and Palma). Quite a list!

If the Regional Ministry wants to talk about improving balanced school enrollment, providing resources to schools with greater challenges, consolidating monitoring committees with public indicators, and implementing a plan for healthy and safe school environments with measurable measures, they will find us: we will support them. But, unfortunately, they have refused to promote any of these initiatives, claiming that what the Socialists want is for all children to walk to school. This reductionism and lack of credibility are confirmed in every plenary session by a good portion of the interventions from the People's Party (PP) and Vox. The solution is not difficult: restore a zoning system that is coherent with the territory, put equity at the center, and listen—seriously—to what educators, teachers, families, urban planners, and, above all, children have to say. Because when education loses its way, the price is not paid by a single minister: it is paid by an entire generation.