Omsk Teachers of the city Center for Children and Youth Technical Creativity refuse to leave their jobs after the order to reduce them

More than three dozen teachers of the GTsDYUTT (the city Center for Children and Youth Technical Creativity) do not want to “optimize”, or, in other words, to shrink. The protest against the reduction is expressed in the fact that after the order on it, signed on June 3 this year, they continue to go to work.

Firstly, says the chairman of the trade union committee Elena Tsykunova, the decision of the mayor's office is illegal, and secondly, it is immoral. This center is one of the largest institutions of additional education in the city. More than 1,800 students are involved in car and aircraft modeling, as well as rocket modeling, radio engineering, karting, BMX, technical design, etc.

The achievements of engineering thought of the local pupils are appreciated at the highest level, including in the Kremlin. Only in recent years (and recently the Center turned 25) six children became laureates of the award for supporting talented youth, established by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation. More than 400 members of the GTsDYUTT circles are winners of competitions, competitions of festivals - from municipal to world ones, and about half of the reduced teachers have the highest and first categories.

“Here, future specialists are growing up, who are sorely lacking in our industry,” Gennady Drozdov, a deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, noted at the last meeting of the committee on social issues of the city council.

Why was it necessary to optimize one of the few institutions in Omsk that give its residents, especially schoolchildren and their parents, hope for tomorrow? The optimization of the Center inspires optimism only in officials of the city administration, who performed it in almost any situation (for example, the closure of children's libraries, which Novaya wrote about in No. 56, according to them, is also a good deed for Omsk residents).

At the mentioned meeting, the director of the education department, Ilya Dubin, said that the reorganization of the State Central Children's and Youth Theater - merging it with the Sozvezdie and Amursky children's art centers - would save 3.5 million rubles to the city budget over the year. At the same time, the official assured, all teachers will be employed and all circles will be preserved.

In fact, Vasily Starostin, chairman of the council of representatives of the Omsk Confederation of Labor, believes that the point at issue is, in fact, the liquidation of the Center. Moreover, this process is going on, he told our correspondent, with gross violations of labor and civil legislation. “Teachers are forced to resign of their own free will, including through threats: they say, if you don’t write a statement, then you won’t find a job anywhere. Some are fired for far-fetched reasons - they are reinstated through the courts. There is a total psychological pressure - people even call home. But the team here is close-knit - ready to resist bureaucratic arbitrariness, it is possible that through joint protest actions.

The Center's employees ignored the order to reduce its staff and refused to sign that they were familiar with it. Instead of the applications for dismissal proposed by them, they write applications to the prosecutor's office, the State Labor Inspectorate, collective appeals to various authorities, reminding them what V. Putin said in his message to the Federal Assembly (December 12, 2012): “We need to develop a system of technical and artistic creativity, to open circles, sections, summer sports camps… All this should be available to every child, regardless of the place of residence or the financial situation of the family.”

The problem is that these correct words contradict the order of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation “On the course of optimizing the network of subordinate educational institutions”, signed back in 2007. The mayor’s office stepped up its execution about six months ago due to the worsening of the city budget deficit: for example, in January 2013, also under the guise of “reorganization”, the Virazh station for young technicians was liquidated.

In addition to Putin, Oleg Smolin, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Education of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, speaks in defense of the GTsDYUTT, he is sure that technical children's creativity and artistic creativity in one institution are incompatible. On this occasion, the deputy recently met with the mayor of Omsk, Vyacheslav Dvorakovsky, who has not yet said anything specific about the fate of the Center. Teachers hope that the head of the city will nevertheless turn the process of "optimization" in the opposite direction. If this does not happen, they are ready to move from a quiet cabinet protest to a loud street protest. And there is no doubt that they will be supported by the parents of their pupils, who, for the most part, do not know what fate is in store for the Center. According to Vasily Starostin, the Department of Education deliberately announced the reorganization at the end of the school year, when students went on vacation, hoping to carry it out "without too much noise." But judging by the mood of the protesters, officials will not be able to avoid it.