A school in peril
- Source: Global Times
- [22:06 February 09 2010]
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By Xu Donghuan
Ma Ruigang, headmaster of Blue Sky Experimental School
He is proud of the school he helped build for the children of migrant laborers, the Blue Sky Experimental School in eastern Beijing.
But headmaster Ma Ruigang is a sad man, too, standing in the cold, watching his students frolic in a snow-covered playground during an afternoon class break.
The bell rings. Students scurry to their classrooms. They leave their headmaster standing in front of a burgundy-colored, two-story schoolhouse, less than six months old.
"My two business partners and I spent 2 million yuan($146,461) on the building," he says, shaking his head. "It's all hard-earned money over the past two decades."
Blue Sky is one of 18 privately-owned schools for migrant children that will soon be bulldozed in the eastern suburbs of Beijing to make way for office towers and new apartment buildings. Tens of thousands of children will be left without a school of their own, forced to either go to work or return to their home provinces.
"I know the storm will come sooner or later. But I didn't expect it to arrive so quickly," says Ma. He turns his head away, looking into the distance.
Over the next few months, China's forced demolition, which has already led to the suicide of a dispossessed home owner in Sichuan Province, will begin tearing down schools for the children who need them most—the poor children of migrant workers in Beijing.
You find the Blue Sky School at the end of a narrow alleyway lined by low-rise brick houses, about 12 kilometers east of the China World Trade Center in Chaoyang district.
The school, which covers an area of 6,000 square meters and houses 740 students from preschool to the ninth grade, was formally registered with the local education authority in 2005. In April 2009, the school signed an eight-year contract with the landowner, according to Ma.
But on July 17, 2009, the Chaoyang District Branch of the Beijing Land Clearing and Reserve Center under the Beijing Land and Resources Bureau announced a large-scale demolition project to reserve land for future development. This summer, 2.6 square kilometers of land spanning eight counties will be cleared, including Dongba township where Ma's school is located.
"We first learned the news from the newspapers," said Zhu Daojing, Ma's business partner.
