Violent debate in the Falkensee education committee over the petition for the day care center

Falkensee.The discussion in the Falkensee Committee for Education, Culture, Sport and Social Affairs has rarely been as heated as last Wednesday evening: when the city councilors left the meeting after four o’clock, loud arguments and slammed doors, they hadn’t gotten much in terms of content. . In particular, the debate on how to deal with the petition of the parents of several municipal daycares has generated a lot of resentment.

Another topic for residents’ question time

The subject has already been discussed during the question-and-answer session of the inhabitants, some parents having specified that the answer given by the mayor during the last municipal council was not satisfactory. Parents criticize the continued understaffing of municipal facilities, which comes at the expense of safe and educational care for children. They see the city as having a responsibility to take stronger action and exhaust all staffing opportunities.

Mayor Heiko Müller (SPD) claimed that the situation is still within the legal framework: “I would like to say that we are not behaving according to the contract. The problems are the same nationwide. The corona pandemic was a continuing state of emergency. You can’t hire as many staff as the rest of the staff still do 100% when a wave of disease hits daycares.”

Various recruiting issues

Müller also pointed to various difficulties that exist in recruiting staff and which he believes will only get worse in the future: “One problem is the availability of affordable land and living space. Educators are not among the highest paid. We have many employees who come from outside. If they find work in their home town, they are often gone.

The subject of the retirement age is also worrying: “We currently benefit from a generation of kindergarten teachers trained in the GDR at the end of the 1970s. They will retire in large numbers from 2023/2024. We cannot compensate for this with our own training, which 21 trainees are currently following part-time. There is far too little training at the state level,” says Müller. Since a new daycare center will be open in the summer and the daycare key will be increased, the city already needs 18 additional educators by the summer break.

The mayor considers it difficult to have more staff than necessary for ethical reasons

Müller also argued that for ethical reasons it would be problematic for a municipality to hire and finance staff in addition to the key to the nursery: “If wealthy municipalities hire staff, this means that the municipalities with the most poor will no longer hire staff. able. We should set a goal to meet the guard key which arrives in August. Doing unrealistic things leads to disenchantment with politics.

For example, Müller calculated that in April the city was serving 17.9 full-time units (FTEs) more than required by Kita’s personnel ordinance: “We have 250 employees who correspond to 178.8 FTE. Of the care contracts concluded, there is only a need for staff of 160.9 FTE in April. 17.1 FTEs dropped out.

Parents think the mayor’s statements are false

A parent who spoke from the auditorium and contradicted the representations of the mayor finally had to be expelled from the room. Amid Jabbour (FDP) said: “Presenting things too nicely also leads to disenchantment with politics. We have a petition here in which more than 700 people from Falkensee have come together and said that something is wrong here. They say something has to happen here. The mayor chose April, which looks nice at first glance. But statistics also met reality in April, when there were restrictions on childcare hours at the Gutspark after-school care centre, where some children were specifically told to stay at home .

After the discussion had digressed more and more, Harald Petzold (Die Linke) finally suggested, “We should postpone the subject to the next meeting and put a serious end to it.”

By Leonie Mikulla