A pact for equality: how Manacor has avoided school segregation
Since the 2015-2016 academic year, public and private schools have had an agreement that allows for the equitable redistribution of vulnerable students.
Palm"They called me from the City Council, very alarmed, and told me: 'Esperanza, if we don't solve this, we'll have to close the school.'" This is the testimony of Esperança Nicolau, principal of CEIP Sa Torre in Manacor. Her school was on the brink of collapse during the 2015-2016 school year, the first in which the Balanced Schooling Agreement was in effect, aiming to redistribute vulnerable students between public and private schools. At that time, 21 families had lost their place in their first choice and were assigned to Sa Torre, a school widely stigmatized for having had nearly 90% of students of North African origin for years. None of these families wanted to attend.
The municipal call didn't express the City Council's will (which was the opposite), but rather a cry of alarm: it was necessary to get the families to accept their place at the center. Eleven did so. The initiative of the center's new management team was key, working to convince the dissident families that they would be well cared for at Sa Torre.
That critical situation would mark the beginning of a profound transformation. If until then the school was considered the municipality's ghetto, today it is an example of integration and diversity. Nicolau summarizes: "The success of the project is balance, because now all the schools have the same sociogram and we work on an equal footing." According to the director, the previous reality was not conducive to either social or curricular aspects: "The school is a very powerful and transformative social agent, but the way we were, we couldn't do the work we needed to do, and we couldn't give back to society what society had given us," she says. She refers to the "brutal" language barriers and the difficulty of carrying out the educational project: "We had many families who, for example, didn't approve of us doing field trips or complementary activities." Another benefit of the new reality is peer learning: "If you have a child who is perhaps a little more advanced, they can serve as a reference and stretch what they aren't as good at," the director assures.
Shared Responsibility
This change was not a coincidence. It is the direct result of a firm agreement between schools and the Administration to redistribute students with needs in a more equitable and fair manner. The agreement involves the CEIP Sa Torre, Simón Ballester, Ses Comes, Mitjà de Mar, Molí d'en Xema, Jaume Vidal Alcover, and Sa Graduada, and the subsidized schools La Salle, San Vicente de Paúl, La Pureza, and San Francisco.
Josep Gomila, education inspector and promoter of the agreement in Manacor, details how it works: "It focuses on students entering the 4th year of Preschool. It was impossible to achieve an equitable distribution," he explains. With the agreement, each year the City Council filters all children entering the education system for the first time. From there, an Education worker and a Social Services worker meet with the families to conduct an assessment of each child: special needs, vulnerable situations, and lack of knowledge of official languages are detected.
Everything is done before school begins. This makes it possible to have three distinct processes afterward: one for ordinary students, one for those considered NESE (Educational Support Needs), and another for those with NEE (Special Educational Needs). Children only compete with those with the same grade. Based on each year's census, a maximum number of students per profile is set. For example, each classroom can accommodate 15 ordinary students, six NESE (Educational Support Needs), and one with special educational needs. "All schools, both public and private, pull together," says Gomila.
One of the characteristics of the Balearic education system is the constant trickle of new enrollments even after the school year has begun. In Manacor, efforts are being made to redistribute these places among all schools with places, although CEIP Molí d'en Xema—the school with the third largest number of students in the Balearic Islands—receives a greater number because it has three lines and always tends to have places. Bel Rigo, its director, has a positive assessment of the agreement but calls for changes: "It stems from a very strong commitment from all the schools and it works, but after 10 years it needs to be updated to meet new circumstances," she says. She also calls for more meetings between directors and the administration, beyond the enrollment committee that meets at the end of each school year to prepare for the next steps: "It's necessary to analyze how everything is evolving and see if vulnerability is once again concentrated in a single school, in order to correct it."
A key element of the system are the state-subsidized schools. Until a few years ago, some of them mainly accommodated native students, but today they have become fully involved in the distribution of vulnerability. The director of La Salle de Manacor High School, Xisco Manresa, is comfortable: "We are very clear that we must fulfill our duty to support education and equality. We perform a basic social function," he concludes. Today, La Salle is just another center within the multicultural reality of the municipality.
Manacor is an example of how collaboration between educational centers, the Administration, and Social Services can transform educational realities marked by segregation and turn them into spaces of equality, integration, and shared learning.
