The Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Sandra Valencia, has claimed the boost that the regional Executive is giving to the air conditioning of classrooms to cope with high temperatures, especially in the final weeks of the course. As she explained, interventions are already being carried out in 74 educational centers and another 130 are expected to benefit from this year's aid call.
"The government of María Guardiola has been the first to implement measures to deal with high temperatures in classrooms," the minister stated in response to a question raised in the Plenary Session of the Assembly this Thursday by the deputy of Unidas por Extremadura Nerea Fernández, who criticized that, once again, at the end of this course the solution to the heat has been to reduce the school day in areas where meteorological warnings have been activated.
Valencia highlighted that, for the first time, a General Directorate of Educational Centers and Infrastructures has been created within the Ministry of Education, which in her opinion reflects the importance that the current Executive gives to spaces that were "forgotten" by the previous socialist government.
She also pointed out that the General Budget project of the Autonomous Community for 2026, which is currently going through parliamentary processing, includes 83 million euros allocated to works in educational centers, as well as 30 million for energy efficiency actions in Secondary Education institutes aimed at electrical self-consumption.
In this context, and after indicating that the state in which numerous centers in the region find themselves is a "disgrace" after visiting five of them since she took office, she attributed this situation to the "neglect" of the different PSOE governments for three decades in Extremadura. She also insisted that "air conditioning classrooms is not about installing fans or split units," but rather "investing in educational infrastructure, because what often happens is that there isn't even the electrical capacity" to connect these devices.
Likewise, she reproached the socialists for the statements of their former general secretary when he said that "we have to learn to live with climate change and high temperatures," against which she defended that the current government has come "to work, to provide solutions and to make energy efficiency and the air conditioning of our educational centers a reality."
Valencia has assured that this objective will be met, relying on subsidies from the Junta directed at town councils, owners of the schools, so that they undertake improvement works for air conditioning: "we already have 74 centers that are starting to be air-conditioned and in this year's call for applications, more than 130 centers".
"Air conditioning in classrooms will be a reality and we are working very intensely towards it," she remarked.
Criticism for non-compliance with the law
On the other hand, the deputy from Unidas por Extremadura Nerea Fernández has justified her question to the counselor alleging that in some regions of the territory, at the end of this school year, "classes will not end at their scheduled time because they will have to close earlier to be able to send the boys and girls home because it is impossible to be in the centers".
She has also denounced that Law 4/2019, of February 18, on improving energy efficiency and the thermal and environmental conditions of Extremaduran educational centers is "systematically" violated by the different governments since its approval. In this regard, she recalled that the PP has been governing since 2023 and, since then, they have done "nothing, and surely they will do nothing" to implement a regulation that has been in force for seven years.
"You don't have to be a genius, ladies and gentlemen, to know that at the end and beginning of school years it is very hot and we have high temperatures that are unviable for education and for our teachers, our students, and all the people who work in the centers to be able to be in the classrooms," she insisted.
She also wondered how many "heatstrokes" must occur in the centers for them to "wake up and do their job," recalling that the Law on Prevention of Occupational Risks establishes that one cannot work at more than 27 degrees.
At this point, she proposed to the deputies an exercise in empathy by turning off the air conditioning in the chamber "so that you wake up when it comes to air-conditioning the classrooms," and concluded by pointing out that it will finally be checked whether María Guardiola's government prioritizes "chiringuitos" like the Institute of Mestizaje first.