Back to School!

Haven't had much time to write lately and this blog's been suffering from abandon. Reading the news, however, some things are too much not to share. I'll try to at least post brief mentions of some of them in the coming month and links to the articles (in Spanish).

So for today:

The city government (headed up by conservative businessman Mauricio Macri), is putting the city on a diet, squeezing money out of schools and hospitals, social programs and public spending. (Although recently they did announce new public funding for private schools, the majority of which are religious.) The latest? Canceling a program that distributed school supplies (pencils, notebooks, etc) to 30,000 low income school children. How much does the city save? 280,000 pesos (approx. $93,000).

They've also cut out minimal scholarships for students, turned a blind eye to the absence of heating in many schools, and cheapened cafeteria food, replacing the minimal amount of cold cuts with some sort of (apparently inedible) soy mixture. Teachers are on strike for what I think is the fifth time (since the school year began in March) but the government says it won't talk to them until 2009.