The Local Government Board of the La Laguna City Council has approved the commission to the public company Gesplan to draw up the construction project for the first Municipal Infant School (EIM) in the northeast region, which will be located on locally owned land in Bajamar.
The Social Welfare Area promotes and will manage this public service for children from 0 to 3 years old, a program that wants to facilitate family reconciliation and that, like the other 7 EIMs it manages, will be aimed at families with limited resources. and at no cost to users.
This new public facility will cover the towns of Tejina, Valle de Guerra, Bajamar and Punta del Hidalgo, in which an average population of 400 minors up to 3 years of age is estimated, according to the comparison of the different annuities of the municipal register, has reported this Monday the City Council of La Laguna in a note.
The Northeast Nursery School will be built on a municipal plot of almost 4,000 square meters, located next to the TF-13 in Bajamar and in which, according to the current General Planning Plan, educational use is allowed.
“This public nursery school is a historical debt with the neighbors of the northeast, a fundamental resource to guarantee equal opportunities and a quality service that contributes, both to the most disadvantaged families in the region and to the entire community, instruments useful and capable of compensating for true social inequalities and providing opportunities for personal development from early childhood”, explains the Councilor for Social Welfare, Rubens Ascanio.
Although La Laguna has the largest municipal offer of public squares on the island and the second in the Canary Islands, with almost 300 spaces in 7 facilities distributed throughout different districts and areas with the largest population, the La Laguna Social Welfare Area registers, every year , an average of 400 applications for a place for one of these EIM in the entire municipality.
In addition, the towns and neighborhoods of the northeast have a series of territorial and socioeconomic singularities that make this service of general interest to guarantee cohesion and equal opportunities, to which is added that they lack a sufficient complementary offer and that the Families in the area are forced to travel several kilometers to access these resources, both public and private.
With these objectives, the Governing Board, at the proposal of the Councilor for Social Welfare, has approved an investment of 109,999.64 euros for the “Drafting of the Basic and Execution Project for the Municipal Nursery School in the Northeast Region area”, as well as the entrustment to the entity Gestión y Planeamiento Territorial y Medioambiental, SA (Gesplan).
A decision that has favorable technical and administrative reports and that wants to speed up the construction of the building as much as possible, given the general interest and the need for this infrastructure, as accredited in various studies and municipal reports prepared since 2018 and that emanate from a plenary agreement of 2015.
For the subsequent execution of the work, La Laguna hopes to have funding from the Canary Islands Government Department of Education, as has been assessed in previous meetings between the two administrations.
The Municipal Nursery Schools of La Laguna currently have 292 places for children between 4 months and 3 years of age in the Padre Anchieta centers, this one under direct municipal management; Pérez Soto de El Cardonal-Taco, Verdellada, La Cuesta, Laurisilva (also in La Cuesta) and Guamasa, all of these under the management of the Municipal Housing and Services Society of San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Muvisa), as well as the San Matías, which is also expected to be extended to the public commission once the currently valid award contract ends.
