The Supreme Court condemned the Community of Madrid to pay 451,399.52 euros for having unilaterally suspended in the months of March, April and May 2020 the Collaboration Agreement it had with the Municipality of Rivas-Vaciamadrid for the financing of its municipal nursery schools from 0 to 3 years. The city council turned to the High Court, which ruled in favor on October 17, after Madrid’s Superior Court of Justice ruled in favor of the regional government in 2022.
The issue is that the Community Education Department chaired by Isabel Díaz-Ayuso decreed on March 9, 2020 the cessation of all in-person educational activities. However, while for all pupils over the age of three “the teleworking system was promoted as long as it was compatible with the continuity of educational activities”, the possibility for children in nursery schools from 0 to 3 years of age to do the same was never contemplated by the then Minister of Education, Enrique Ossorio, current president of the Madrid Assembly. Ossorio even described this option this way through the social network Twitter: “that the nursery service for 0 to 3 year olds can be provided online is an insult to intelligence”.
A month ago, the @ComunidadMadrid informed the municipal councils of the rules that must be applied. To say now that the nursery service for 0 to 3 year olds can be provided online is an insult to intelligence. We respect the law and are consistent. pic.twitter.com/8ileX55PGB
— Enrique Ossorio (@eossoriocrespo) April 17, 2020
With the total cessation of the activity of nursery schools, the Ministry stopped sending the money with which the Municipalities of the Community financed their municipal nursery schools thanks to a Collaboration Agreement between administrations. The agreement was broken without there being an agreement between the parties. “We respect the law and are consistent,” added Ossorio.
However, the Municipality of Rivas-Vaciamadrid stood against this decision and supported its three municipal schools and its Children’s Home by paying the costs for the activity to continue electronically for the rest of the year. Now, five years later, with a ruling to which EL PAÍS had access, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the municipality, which asked the Regional Council for “expenses for early childhood education” after having “violated the collaboration agreement”. 451,399.52 euros is the exact amount that the Community was condemned to pay.
—The Supreme Court just assessed Ossorio’s intelligence—says Pedro del Cura, who was mayor of Rivas from 2014 to 2022 and ran the municipality during the worst phase of the pandemic.
“The Community of Madrid has made an economic cut and has discredited the work of early childhood educators. This sentence is a success for this group and accredits the importance of the phase from 0 to 3 years in the development of children,” he adds. “We know that many other municipalities did not dare pay for online lessons in their municipal schools because they did not know if they would get the money back,” he concludes.
The current mayor of Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Aída Castillejo, was Councilor for Education of the city council in 2020. «There has never been good communication between the administrations, we knew the intentions of the Community from the school directors or from the press», he recalls. “I remember that they promised that they would return the funds they owed us to the municipalities until they reported them. But it was of no use and we decided to appeal,” he explains. “This victory, in addition to supporting the work of the schools, recognizes local autonomy and that when there are agreements with larger administrations, we are not younger brothers, but equals. The agreements cannot be broken if there is no mutual agreement”, defends the councilor.
The first hearing regarding this matter between the Municipality of Rivas-Vaciamadrid and the Community took place in the Eighth Section of the Litigation-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid in May 2022. The TSJM ruled in favor of the Regional Council for failure to comply with the agreement, deeming that the provision of the service was “impossible to carry out” once in-person lessons were suspended and given that the recipients were children aged between 0 and 3 years. Also, he added, the activities that have finally taken place online in Rivas nursery schools are intended “for families and not for minors”.
After the ordinance, the Municipality of Rivas-Vaciamadrid presented a cassation appeal to the Supreme Court, which was accepted because it could constitute jurisprudence, i.e. a precedent on the question of whether an agreement between public administrations for the financing of early childhood education centers in the context of a health situation resulting from COVID-19 can be unilaterally broken by one of them. The supreme recognizes the vitality of children’s lessons in electronic format and highlights the activities carried out, such as sending routines, activities or songs, as well as the daily contact between families and educators through the Remind application, or the proposal of healthy menus prepared by the chefs themselves. The judicial victory brought relief and “an enormous feeling of justice” in the corridors of the mayor’s palace in Rivas Vaciamadrid, but above all “a recognition” of the work of its early childhood educators. For its part, the Community of Madrid stated that it “always respects judicial resolutions.”
“The children were eagerly waiting to connect to their classes. They were the intended audience.”
Early childhood educator Mili has honed her wits within the four walls of her home to unimaginable limits. Mili dressed up as a clown, a summer fairy, whatever, using whatever fabric she could find, painting her face with the first thing she had on hand. “Mili was the example that the work that until then had been done in person could continue from home. Every day we prepared videos that were uploaded to a platform that parents had access to. Contact was daily,” says Lola Jiménez, 53, director of the Rayuela de Rivas kindergarten, which has 118 children enrolled. “Our work was for the children, who were eager to connect. Obviously we had to rely on the parents. Storytelling workshops were held, assemblies were prepared, dances were prepared, even the cooks prepared a menu and uploaded the video of the recipe as if they were Arguiñano. Every day 8 hours of work were completed. All this was duly credited”, defends Jiménez in his office. “From 0 to 3 years are the foundations of development. It is unfair to trivialize the work we do in this educational phase. To say that we could not work remotely is to discredit ourselves,” he says. On the other hand, if the Municipality had not financed the course itself, the workers would have turned to ERTE, as happened in the rest of the private nursery schools that closed.
Jimena Navarrete, 45, had daughter Naya at the 1-2 grade level during the 2019-20 academic year. “They confined us and the parents were completely lost. My daughter was always excited to get in touch with the lessons, she asked for it herself. The connection with the teachers was maintained and we could continue to have a routine. They felt part of the school from home. They gave us many tools. We had security, something that in that moment of uncertainty was very precious for families,” she says. Five years later, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor.
