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LYON, France – Nearly 100 school principals and their deputies gathered on Monday in front of a high school in Lyon to express their growing frustration and exhaustion regarding the violence that has occurred on the sidelines of recent student demonstrations. The gathering, held in front of the Lycée Edouard Herriot, served as a call for a “wake-up call” from both students and their parents.
The protest was prompted by an incident last Friday, when a fire caused by burning trash bins spread to the entrance of the Lycée Edouard Herriot, forcing the evacuation of 1,000 students through secondary exits. The school’s entrance suffered significant damage, which participants described as a potentially “dramatic” scenario.
A Call for Respect and Safety
Isabelle Rhety, a school principal in Lyon and deputy academic secretary of the major union SNPDEN-Unsa, expressed the deep-seated fatigue felt by administrators. “Every morning, we are in front of our establishments, students throw trash or barriers at us and insult us: it seems like it has almost become routine,” she told AFP.
The protesters held signs displaying messages such as “dialogue makes the school, outrage destroys it” and “when you target a head of an establishment, you strike the school.”
Damien Coursodon, principal of Lycée Edouard Herriot and a member of the national board of the Indépendance et direction (iD-FO) union, emphasized the human cost of these tensions. “The principal is a human being of flesh and blood. When they are threatened, vilified, or attacked, it has an impact on their integrity, both physical and moral, and on their family,” he explained. He called for increased preventive operations around schools to control crowds and prevent violent gatherings.
Widespread Tensions
As of Monday morning, about a dozen educational institutions in the Lyon region remained affected by student movements, with tensions reported at several of them. Authorities have reported a total of eight arrests related to the firing of mortars. Furthermore, in a separate incident near Bordeaux, a school principal was injured in the head by a thrown projectile.
Source: La Gazette France
