Parents Up in Arms Over Tallinn's School Merger Plan
Boards of trustees at schools set by the Tallinn City Government to merge have begun to fight the move, with one board having already collected over 1,000 protest signatures from parents.
Tallinn officials were grilled at an emergency meeting in one school yesterday evening, with Deputy Mayor Mihhail Kõlvart saying that merger plans will be specific to each school and the city does not yet know what the next step is, ETV reported on Wednesday.
Tallinn City Government said on Wednesday that, for financial reasons, it plans to merge a dozen schools into six as some schools are too small or running only at half capacity.
The Minister of Education, Jaak Aaviksoo, said he backs the general idea to merge schools as the city's school system has been problematic for a while.
According to the plan, eight schools will be merged into four this year, and four into two in 2015, as classes with fewer than 32 children in secondary schools and 24 children in primary schools, are no longer financially viable.