PCMC sends notice to pvt school over shifting students to ‘isolated’ building

However, the school rubbished these claims saying the second building is on the same campus within 200 metre and it also has permission from the DyDE to do so.

Even as the school claims to have received a clearance from the DyDE, a letter issued by the PCMC officials reached the school on Thursday.

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The letter which has no specific date (it says only June 2016) and no registration number, signed by B S Karekar, administration officer, education, PCMC stated that the office has received complaints that the school has shifted some classes to an adjacent building.

Stating that the school has been asked in the past by the DyDE to move back students to old campus, the letter added that the school has not complied with the order.

“Yes, we have issued the letter to the school based on parents’ complaints and we are now waiting for the school’s reply before taking any further action,” said Karekar.

One of the parents, Aparna Pathak, whose child is in Class I, said the school has shifted two sections of Class I and one section of Class II to the new building without taking any prior permission of the education department.

“The new building is actually the building of mass communication students. Here, older students walk in and out and frankly, I am not too comfortable with having such small children study in same building as them. Secondly, on main campus, there are 3,000 students in the entire building, ground, library, laboratories and so on and here there are 120 students with just three ground floor classes. It doesn’t even give the environment of a school and this is not what we are paying for, we want equal opportunities for our children. And the most important factor is legalisation — did the school take prior permission or decide on themselves it would be okay to do so?” she said.

Meanwhile, Geeta Pillai, principal of the school, refuted all allegations.

“First, at the time of admissions itself, parents were informed that the applications are much more than available seats and that’s why new students will be accommodated in the new building, to which they agreed. Secondly, there is no security issue as we have posted enough security and the senior students do not use the building anymore. Thirdly, the complaint was brought up by parents earlier before the DyDE issued a letter in March 2016 stating we have not done anything illegal,” she said.

The school even shared the said eight-page letter with Pune Newsline where Ramchandra Jadhav, former DyDE said the students were shifted on account of shortage of space within 200 metre of the same campus owned by parent society and hence this is not a case of migration.