The Non-Transparent Actions of Tomašević’s Administration Are Concerning

A reader called me and asked for help. His child attends the Tituš Brezovački Gymnasium in Zagreb, which has recently been in the news due to the City Council’s decision to temporarily relocate classes for students of the XVIII Gymnasium to its building, which is undergoing renovation. I tell him that I understand the parental concern, but that this is not a topic for Lider, but for some other newspapers. However, I relented, mainly due to one detail: that Mayor Tomislav Tomašević did not want to meet with representatives of the Parent Council of Tituš Brezovački.

The reader tells me that the decision of the city fathers was made hastily, and this was also heard from the president of the Parent Council, Tea Švaljek Krešić. That the parents are not alone is evident from the letter from the School Board sent to the City Council of Zagreb on September 26, stating that the school simply does not have the space to accommodate students from the XVIII Gymnasium because even those attending Tituš Brezovački barely fit in. Moreover, some classrooms are so small that even the doors can hardly be opened.

The Whole School Is Against It

While their school has a total of three thousand square meters, the buildings of the I and XII Gymnasiums, as stated in the letter, each have eight thousand square meters, are newer, and they believe that students from the XVIII Gymnasium should attend classes there. Furthermore, due to the students from the XVIII Gymnasium, a two-shift work schedule would be introduced at Brezovački, even overlapping shifts, the reader notes, horrified at the possibility of picking up his child from school after 8 PM.

We do not actually know how long the classes would last, so we will not take that into account; I just wanted to express the fears that parents are facing. It would also be difficult to check what the work plan in Tituš Brezovački would be (if the students from the XVIII Gymnasium move in) considering that we have not received a response to our questions from the City Council. In this text, I will also not discuss whether the city fathers who chose this school to accommodate students from another school have the right to do so or whether the Parent Council and the School Board of Tituš Brezovački do. I see a problem in the extremely poor communication of the city fathers led by Mayor Tomislav Tomašević with the parents and the management of the Tituš Brezovački Gymnasium.

As the media has also reported, the president of the Parent Council, Švaljek Krešić, stated that this body sent a letter to Mayor Tomašević requesting a meeting, but he ignored them. Then the representatives of the Council exerted pressure, and on October 1, they were finally received at the City Council, but not by the mayor. However, on that day, they realized, as Švaljek Krešić stated, that the decision had already been made despite the letter from the School Board dated September 26. It is clear that they were not openly told in the City Council that the decision had already been made, which further confirms the non-transparency of the City Council in this case.

Decision Received by Email

Finally, the Parent Council only received the decision on October 8 that students from the XVIII Gymnasium would attend classes at Tituš Brezovački, and not officially, but via email. And that is all. The silence of the City Council during the meeting (the parents only managed to understand that the decision had already been made) and Tomašević’s refusal to meet with them, in my opinion, were very poor moves. I understand the current Zagreb administration considering the skeletons that still fall out of the closets from the time of Milan Bandić, and I have the impression that there is still credit among a large part of the citizens of Zagreb despite the gaffes made during these more than three years of governance, but how sensitive this issue was is precisely confirmed by the aforementioned silence.

Therefore, I believe that the mayor made a significant mistake by not receiving the representatives of the Parent Council and not countering their arguments with his own. By his behavior, he and his closest associates only increased the suspicion that the decision to relocate classes for students of the XVIII Gymnasium was hasty and that the arguments of the other side were not even considered. Not to mention that in this way, someone, who knows whom, was favored and accommodated. Because, as is always the case in such situations, theories about favoritism towards some parents of students from the XVIII Gymnasium who specifically wanted their children to attend Tituš Brezovački Gymnasium because it is the closest to them arise.

POST SCRIPTUM

As I mentioned, I did not want to comment on the decision itself because I do not have enough information on whether some other schools could accommodate students from the XVIII Gymnasium. And those children still need to be placed somewhere. For example, in the school my children attend, classes for students from another gymnasium are temporarily held. It is not easy; classes are organized in multiple shifts, but that is how it is. Unfortunately, I fear that the least bad option was not even considered.