As you enter the #10 special school named after Petros Duryan, you immediately feel that the school really is special. First, let’s not forget to mention that the school is located in the well known “Korean Canyon”, which is officially known as the Roundabout tunnel of the Arabkir community.
This means that the school, along with the residency, are far from Yerevan: it is in a canyon and in order to get to the city, one must first walk 1.5 kilometers by foot and then sit in one of the taxis serving the residencies of the Kotayk Marz. As for the school, it is special in that the school is so old that it seems like there is “nobody around”. The reality is that the school is in that situation because the state does not care and it has never been fully renovated ever since it was constructed. It is impossible to describe the school in a couple of words because you can’t say that the floor is tore apart, the glass windows are broken, or that the walls of the hallway are dirty and stop there. The school is special with its unique smell and it is hard to say whether that smell is the smell of antiques or the result of bad bathrooms. The school is special with its students. Insecure students attend the school and the majority of them don’t have mothers. Years ago, while registering the students, the school administration stated that most of the students had lung inflammation due to not being taken care of parents and this school was considered as a night health care center for them. If we go back more, this night school was an orphanage in the 1940s and turned into a special school in 1958. Many orphans do not want to return to their homes despite the fact that the school is in poor conditions.
There are 160 students studying at the Petros Duryan special school. The school is for 8 years. Some of the students have been enrolled in the school since the 1st grade and the rest have come at different ages. They come from Yerevan and the surrounding regions. The students stay at the school five days a week and then go to their homes on Saturdays and Sundays. The majority does not want to go home due to the fact that they don’t have normal families and normal living conditions. Judging from the insecurity, parents take advantage of their children and send them out as beggars or to work sites not corresponding to their age level. People say that the children are brought there not only because the families are living in poor conditions, but also because some parents have started new lives and new families and consider their children as burdens on their shoulders. You feel that cruelty as soon as the child says that he or she doesn’t want to go to school and doesn’t love his or her mother. Owner of the school Marine Aghajanyan asked us not to mention any names in the article and not to bring up any examples because the children are quite sensitive.
The school is under the supervision of the Educational department of the municipality and only receives money from the state for salaries for professional staff, communal and food expenses. The state pays 605 drams daily for feeding the children staying at the night school. As for the students that go to their homes, they receive 350 drams worth of meals a day. This is how much the state cares about these 160 children that don’t have parents or feel the pain of not having parents by their sides. The charitable organizations solve the problems such as buying clothes and stationery products for the students. The main benefactor is the Armenian branch of Newborns’ Milk Committee of Toronto which has funded many programs for the school throughout the years. At first, the committee provided 150 dollars a month for the school’s nutrition program. “Now, the committee only provides 200-250 dollars a month for nutrition,” says owner Mrs. Aghajanyan. “We receive the clothes and stationery products from the NGOs.”
Representative of the committee in Armenia Petros Ter-Ohanyan states that the state provides 500 dollars a month to the school. Besides that, the state also provides the children with clothes every year and funds important projects. For some reason, Mrs. Aghajanyan did not inform us about the projects, but then former owner Poghos Grigorian told us that this committee had provided money for building a diner and ceremony hall in the school years ago. The committee assessor Zhirayr Torikyan and other Diasporan Armenians were present at the opening of the hall. The event was held during the winter. Mr. Torikyan had gotten a cold and decided to partly implement the school’s gasification and heating project. One Diasporan Armenian family has remodeled one classroom.
These projects, which implemented now and then, have not been able to make the school look at least a little attractive. The work done does not even appear in the midst of all the antiquity. The school awaits another change: in 2007, the school will be passed on to the supervision of the Ministry of Social Security of the Republic of Armenia and the students will have to attend the nearby school. Owner Marine Aghajanyan believes that that will be better for the children. “In that case, the “special” word will not be included in their diplomas,” says Mrs. Aghajanyan. “The ministry will provide the school with buses which will transport the children from home to school and vice versa.”
But the children don’t want to move to a new school. They want their school to be remodeled so that they don’t have to go anywhere. Most of them can not adapt to the changes in the new school. However, the #10 special school doesn’t seem to be in the list of school which are going to be remodeled with the help of the state and the “Linsie” Fund.