Buenos Aires Herald - 20/01/2014
Nota - Nota de tapa

Buenos Aires City Mayor Mauricio Macri reviews Metrobus public works last week.
Paid institutions receive 10 times the funding than does infrastructure for public education
The Buenos Aires City administration led by Mayor Mauricio Macri invests only one peso in school infrastructure for every ten pesos it gives to private schools, a report by the City’sAuditor General revealed.
The City also fails to fulfill legal requirements for the management of 1.573 billion pesos per year destined for private education.
The City’s Auditor General report challenges the way Macri’s administraiton awards benefits to private schools, 90 percent of which are run by the Catholic Church.
These figures were first revealed by newspaper Tiempo Argentino yesterday, at a time when the PRO administration has launched a tender to build units that are reminiscent of containers as a solution to the problems caused by his administration’s new online registration system, which has left between 3,000 to 17,000 children without spots in the public school system.
A matter of numbers
In 2012, which is the last data available, the Macri administration allocated 1.573 billion pesos in subsidies, but there were no “legal expert reports that could justify the termination or modification of grants, nor the grants themselves,” noted the report.
No priorities were set because “in neither case was an evaluation made” to define which schools needed subsidies the most, the auditor general added.
Article 25 of the City Constitution says that “non-state private and public individuals offering school services are subject to general guidelines established by the state, which evaluates, regulates and controls their management.”
The city Constitution leaves no room for doubt over the way funds should be allocated.
“The City may make contributions, prioritizing institutions that receive most of the disadvantaged students,” that same article says.
According to the Auditor General, this obligation was not met by the PRO administration as “substantial changes” on the funds allocation as well as several “incompletions” regarding the drafting of administrative documents have been detected.
As thousands of parents say their children have been left without slots in the educational system, the imbalance between state funding for private education and the City’s investment to build and improve school buildings has taken new meaning.
Record-high subsidies
Victory Front (FpV) representative for the City’s Auditor General, Eduardo Epszteyn, said state subsidies for private education in the district last year reached a record-high 1.800 billion pesos. Meanwhile, the budget for school infrastructure approved by the PRO-dominated City legislature was of 158 million pesos, a figure ten times smaller.
According to Epszteyn’s estimates, 2012 and 2013 were the years with the lowest investment since 2007.
Between 2008 and 2012 “417 million pesos of the approved budget were not used,” the FpV representative told Tiempo Argentino.
The Civil Association for Equality and Justice (ACIJ) had already denounced the situation two years ago.
Privately-run schools with “extremely high” tuition fees are “still heavily subsidized” by the Macri administration, the organization headed by Gustavo Maurino said.
Herald with Télam