Several parents of Tsungyeh Elementary School students protested yesterday against Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih’s (蘇煥智) insistence on closing the school despite the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) ruling against the move.
Parent Hsu Tse-chiao (徐澤佼) told a press conference in the legislature that Su failed to hold any public hearings to discuss the plan with teachers, students and their parents before making the decision.
Hsu said the county government also amended its regulations to legitimize Su’s decision right after student Cheng Ya-hsin (鄭雅心) won her appeal to the ministry last month to overturn the decision to merge her school in Matou Township (麻豆) with a neighboring one.
PHOTO: CNA
“Our children want to stay and graduate from this school. This is their humble request,” Hsu said.
She said Su’s actions violated Article 8 of the Education Basic Law (教育基本法), which stipulates that parents have the right to choose the form of their children’s education and to participate in school affairs when their children are receiving compulsory education.
National Teachers’ Association secretary-general Kevin Wu (吳忠泰), who attended the press conference, said: “If this [merger] were allowed, I would doubt if Taiwan is really a democracy.”
The parents were in Taipei to appeal to the Control Yuan yesterday morning.
The Tainan County Government said in May that it planned to merge Tsungyeh Elementary School and Wencheng Elementary School into a facility that would focus on the fine arts.
Several parents of Tsungyeh students brought their children along with them to protest in front of the ministry on June 20, kneeling in front of the building and asking that the merger be canceled.
Cheng was the first elementary student in the country to win a suit against a local government.
But the county government amended its regulations to allow for the merger on July 15 — the day after the ministry’s Committee of Appeal had ruled in Cheng’s favor.
MOE Secretary-General Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) urged the county government last Friday to protect the students’ rights and to communicate with Tsungyeh’s teachers, students and parents.
However, Su told a press conference in Tainan County yesterday that the plan would not be changed. He said the county government began planning the merger in 2002 in an effort to end the rivalry between Tsungyeh and Wencheng.
He also rejected the parents’ contention that he failed to communicate with Tsungyeh representatives.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai