Cry for help from the municipal music schools

LleidaA new front is opening up for the Catalan education sector. Municipal music schools, with more than 50,000 students throughout Catalonia (15,000 more than 15 years ago) and under the management of city councils (in a system similar to nursery schools), are making yet another cry for help. With a new demand addressed to all parliamentary groups, the Catalan Association of Music Schools (ACEM) is calling on the Generalitat to substantially increase its budgetary allocation "for proper funding".

Although the co-financing of municipal music schools was established in 1993, it was in 2008when an agreement with a precise funding model was signed based on one third by the Generalitat, one third by the city councils, and one third by the students. The commitment lasted only one academic year. The Government's contribution was drastically reduced and, at times, even disappeared. Of the 18 million euros contributed in 2010, which corresponded to one third of the average cost per student (600 euros), in 2011 it fell to 15 million (460 euros per student).

The following year it dropped even further, to 7.8 million (230 per student), and between the 2013 and 2014 fiscal years it was reduced to zero with the argument of the effects of the economic crisis. It was not until 2015 that part of the contribution was recovered, with 4.9 million (which provided an average of 125 euros per student), and in the last two academic years there has been an extraordinary contribution of up to 7.4 million. However, this represents a figure still very far from the 20 that ACEM considers necessary.

For more than a decade, the centers have coped with this cutback in different ways. Often, it is the city councils that make the economic effort, but also by applying labor sacrifices, such as the reduction of non-teaching hours for teachers or the freezing of their salaries, the "wild" increase in fees, or even a request for help from the Associations of Students' Families (AFA). "We understand that managing budgets is complicated, but stopping the allocation of funds to a type of education is a political decision that, while legitimate, we do not like at all," says Carles Farràs, who has been president of ACEM for twelve years, until last March.

Sources from the Department of Education admit that the contributions to schools by the different Catalan governments "have been affected by contexts of budgetary containment that have made them fluctuate", but they also say that they share "the need to progressively move towards a more stable model" and commit to "analyze, together with the local world, the financing mechanisms" in the context of future budgetary frameworks. But they do not specify it.

The issue has been on the table of the Joint Commission of the Government with municipal entities for many years. "We have asked to talk about it again this autumn, because for too long the town councils have been making the effort," says Meritxell Budó, the current president of the Catalan Association of Municipalities (ACM) and mayoress of La Garriga (Vallès Oriental). Precisely there, the Josep Aymerich Music School, with more than 50 years of history and 400 students, has a budget of 750,000 euros. The council assumes about 70% of this amount, while the Generalitat less than 5%, according to municipal data.

Continued uncertainty

It is true that the Government's annual subsidies for schools are processed through a non-competitive tendering regime, meaning they are granted to all applicant entities that meet the regulatory requirements according to the same criteria and scales. These scales, however, have a different impact on each center, depending on its peculiarities and circumstances, including those of a territorial nature, which determines that the subsidy amounts may be different for each school.

In Borges Blanques, the school is jointly funded by all the town councils in the comarca of Les Garrigues. The joint contribution of the councils is exactly one-third of its budget, about 620,000 euros. "We have reached the limit, we cannot assume more effort," confesses the mayor Josep Farran, who regrets that "music education has been segregated from the school curriculum and left to the will of the town councils." Precisely at the school in Les Garrigues, members of the AFA have initiated conversations with the joint council and the center's management to organize a protest day in the autumn to highlight the precarious state of the school.

Both the mayor of Balaguer and current vice-president of Education of the Catalan Federation of Municipalities (FCM), Lorena González, and the former mayor of Tàrrega, Alba Pijuan, responsible for the same area at the FCM for seven years, agree that their town councils have a clear policy in favor of their schools. "It is a priority education in Balaguer," warns González. "Whatever the Generalitat fails to provide, we cover it," adds Pijuan.

Small municipalities, which have even fewer resources, face the most delicate role. "At the school in La Seu d'Urgell, we had to raise fees and reduce working days to avoid laying off teachers," recalls the current president of the ACEM, Sònia Lanau. And another paradigmatic case is that of Linyola (Pla d'Urgell), where the director until now, Ester Trilla, has ended up requesting a leave of absence "due to the continuous uncertainty" that organizing courses with so little stability has caused her. "I miss deep conversations and a forward-looking perspective," claims Trilla. In this regard, the ACEM's written demand includes the creation of a general directorate for Artistic Education and the approval of a law that provides legal certainty to the funding of the centers.

The general secretary of the Federation of Municipalities of Catalonia (FCM), Susanna Mèrida, recalls that these are all issues "that we claim every time we meet with the department," but at the same time acknowledges the efforts that the Generalitat has made so far in improving the funding of nursery schools. The municipal world agrees that now it is the turn of music schools.