Students at Paul Éluard High School in a working-class suburb north of Paris arrived to find classrooms lacking chairs, tables, and reliable electricity, with teaching taking place in prefabricated buildings with bad insulation and filthy toilets. Staff shortages left classes uncovered for over a week, with only a single part-time nurse for roughly 2,000 students. These frustrations fueled protests since late September, with thousands blockading schools across France to demand an overhaul of teacher allocation and education funding.
Union-led rallies in more than 40 cities drew widespread participation, though some demonstrations turned violent, leading to over 6,500 arrests and 750 police injuries. At Paul Éluard, authorities ordered the school's closure after protesters pulled down fencing and set fires. Regional president Valérie Pécresse cited a $50 million investment in the area, but students and teachers argue it does not reverse decades of neglect in Seine-St.-Denis, where 61 percent of schools had missing teachers at the start of the year, eight points above the national average.
উৎস: New York Times Top Stories · সারাংশ: HeadlinesBriefing