350 students are in the lurch as a 50-year-old Marathi school is on the verge of closing down. The school is on the verge of closing after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) declared its building unsafe.
According to the Hindustan Times, the management at Vidyavardhini Vidya Mandir, a government-aided school, which currently has 350 students, announced on April 12 that it will not open in the upcoming academic year which begins in June. This happened after the BMC in January issued a notice to the school stating that the building was in a dilapidated state and asked for a structural audit to be done. The audit revealed that the school was ‘unsafe’ after which the management was asked to vacate it with immediate effect.
After the audit report came, the school officials informed the parents they would have to shift out students to other nearby schools. Sudhakar Tillu, member of the school management told the Hindustan Times, “We have explored all the options that we had — from looking for an alternative space to accommodating students in other BMC schools. But as none of that worked, we asked parents to shift their children but assured that we will help them get a seat elsewhere.”
An ex-student of the school has also written to the state education department in the matter. The parents have said that the new academic year set to begin in a month’s time, they do not want to withdraw their children from the school. A parent told the leading daily, “There are very few Marathi medium schools in the locality. We really liked the school and are now worried about our children’s future.”