UPDATE June 16, 2021:

There is a follow-up to this post.

…or how Brexit style cliff edge negotiation tactics go against parents’ interests

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The decision of the European Schools in Brussels to cut teaching time by 7 half days during the last two weeks of the school year is by now the talk of the town.

The argument to support this decision was that after more than a year of pandemic conditions, teachers are exhausted. The European Schools (ES) do not want to further strain teachers by having late afternoon class councils which, under normal circumstances, often go on beyond 21h.

Indeed, if the school’s staff is exhausted when they have to take important decisions late at night, this will affect the quality of their decisions. This is not a minor matter if school staff have to take a decision on the future of children by deciding if the child must repeat a year or not late at night. The class councils are in particular important for certain grades in secondary school where students’ results have dropped as a result of the pandemic. There are also arguments of secondary students being exhausted and stressed. All students are missing the much needed end of year trips such as the “sea classes” and  “green classes” etc. At Woluwe primary, the P4 & P5 pupils who have classes in the overheated third floor would probably prefer to spend their afternoons at a cooler place. Let’s admit it, the whole school community is exhausted and waiting for the Summer holidays.

Many parents, however, reacted negatively to the seven half days with the following arguments:

• It was a year with many disruptions and cutting the school year shorter is not acceptable.
• It opens a dangerous precedent and as a matter of principle not a single day should be cut.
• Teleworking parents will again have to face lockdown conditions of working and handling their children.

The seven half days were officially communicated by the school in their weekly communication on the 30th of April. Until then, Woluwe parents were not aware of the half days.  During the month of April however, the seven half days were already being debated in other Brussels European Schools. The debate came late to the Woluwe School Community, because our APEEE Board decided to consider such an important matter as confidential… This was an utterly ridiculous thing to do since a letter sent by the EEB1 director responding to an open letter of EEB1’s APEEE president concerning the seven and a half days was in the public domain and freely circulating. In other APEEE’s there are open discussions about the positions to take. Unlike in the trenches of Woluwe where battles seem to be fought behind closed doors.

Why did APEEE Woluwe keep the seven and a half days secret from the parent community? Nobody knows. This polemic discussion took place in other APEEE’s two months before the 21st of June. And yes, our APEEE had two months to organize the buses just like the other Brussels APEEEs did. However, since the APEEE kept the matter confidential from the parents community, they could not consult them about their preferences.

The bottom-line is that the APEEE Woluwe seems to have spent all of its  time and energy battling the school. While, instead, it should have invested at least some of its resources to look for a proper solution for the parents and their kids that would ensure both their practical arrangements, as well as their health and well-being. In the end, the parents seem to have become the victims of a parents association that looked more focused on politics rather than on serving the parents. The APEEE had plenty of time to organize a consultation of the parents and to organize its transport accordingly. That is what Laeken, Ixelles and Uccle have done, and all of them offer bus transport when schools finish.

Instead I believe the Woluwe APEEE chose the Brexit style cliff edge negotiation tactics, using the bus transport for primary and nursery children as a bargaining chip. I believe this was done, in the hope that the narrative of an “unilateral decision of the school” and primary & nursery parents being angry about it, would force the school management to backtrack the decision. In my opinion, in its attempt to achieve this goal, the APEEE kept its leg stiff and did not provide bus transport.

But, like in the real Brexit, the negotiations failed because the backroom deals did not come through. Brexit style negotiations do not work within a highly institutionalized context like the European Schools (as a reference, the APEEE Woluwe had already applied the same type of negotiation tactic with the secondary school, and the result was also not very positive, resulting in an apparent breakdown in the APEEE’s relationship with the school).

The other three APEEE’s wisely choose not to go for this style of negotiations and, as anyone could have easily predicted, for good or for bad, the EEBs four Directors did not budge on their decision. The APEEE Woluwe chose another path and the parents of Woluwe are now dealing with the stress and the mess that ensued.

The consequence of all this was that the APEEE adjusted the bus schedules for Secondary pupils. However, no solution was provided for Primary and Nursery pupils. I can only think that this was payback for spoiling the Evere party for the APEEE Board at the end of 2020. As you may recall, the APEEE discarded itself from taking a position on the ways to populate Evere in the hope that the outcome would be different than it was following the brave activism of many Primary and Nursery parents.

The APEEE decision to provide no solution for Primary and Nursery kids, left the school scrambling for a solution to keep the pupils between 12:50 and the usual bus time. The solution for those not registered to the OIB garderie that operates at the school, and those that are not able to get their kids at the school at 12:50, was the creation of a free surveillance service operated by the school’s non-teaching staff.

However, due to the current epidemiological conditions related to the Covid pandemic, which are still very sensitive (the variant Delta is rapidly spreading in Belgium), this solution is far from perfect. It is far from perfect because it involves mixing of pupils from different language sections and thus increases the risks of spreading the disease. Many families are therefore afraid that their children can become infected, with all the potential health related implications of such an event. On top of that, the risk of increased infections means an increased risk of being quarantined just before the vacation season starts and a good chance of jeopardizing any settled travel plans.

But let’s go back to the decision by the APEEE not to adjust the bus times for Primary and Nursery. The reason brought forward for not being able to adjust the service for Primary and Nursery pupils was that the bus monitors are not available.

This sounds like a good reason indeed. However, in a period of crisis like the one we are facing currently, unlike all other Brussels European Schools APEEEs who stood to the occasion and somehow managed to come up with a solution, the Woluwe APEEE just dropped the ball and didn’t find a solution to overcome the missing monitors situation.

Anyway, so that I am not accused of just being a stubborn obstructionist and never proposing anything constructive, here are some ideas that could be explored and combined to come to a final overall solution:

• The APEEE could have tried to find those extra monitors. We are in the middle of a pandemic. Many people are unemployed. It would have cost time and energy to find those people. But the APEEE which is a business with a turnover of over 6,5 M and which employs the equivalent of more than 40 full time staff could have managed this challenge. What is more is that this was done last year over a weekend when the Belgian government announced the school opening. 
• Make a call for volunteers across the parents community for monitors. In times of crisis I am sure that among the 5,000+ parents many would have stood up to help the parent community on a couple of days during two weeks. I would have been the first to volunteer! Would any Board member join me in that effort?

Where there is a will, there is a way. However, the handling of the buses is as opaque as are other recent other actions of the APEEE: removing meeting minutes from the APEEE’s website, lingering on a blatant conflict of interest – check the counter on the right side column, etc.

Instead the APEEE decided to do nothing and let the situation unravel to the point of now facing angry parents sending this kind of email message around.

If you would like to give your opinion on this matter, there is right now an ongoing survey to find out what the preferred option could be to operate the bus service. It can be filled until Saturday 12 June at 17h.

However, during a power nap this afternoon, I had a dream where Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, told me that maybe the missing bus monitors could still be found. So, let’s all do a quick prayer here: Saint Anthony please look around, the bus monitors are lost in the trenches of Woluwe and must be found!