The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, will be in Taranto tomorrow morning together with the Minister of Education and University, Valeria Fedeli, to inaugurate the 2017-2018 school year. The president will arrive at Grottaglie airport and will head to the Paolo VI district of Taranto, on the outskirts of the city, where he will first visit the Pirandello complex and then the Falcone complex. Both are part of the Pirandello school but the ceremony, starting at 11.00 and ending at 13.20, will take place at Falcone due to the availability of larger spaces. After the ceremony, which in addition to the speeches will also see the performance of some schools, Mattarella will leave for Rome. Rai 1 will broadcast the ceremony live starting at 11am. The national ceremony for the beginning of the school year takes place for the first time in Taranto and a symbolic school has been chosen, Pirandello, which has been attacked several times in recent months by vandals who have damaged doors, windows, furnishings and classrooms, compromising the usability of the building and the regular course of lessons for several weeks. A school in the sights, therefore, restored several times by the Municipality of Taranto, but also a school located in the context of a problematic neighborhood: a large urban suburb born in the early 70s, for a long time mainly inhabited by the employees of the then Italsider. The choice of the name Paolo VI - the neighborhood is on the road to Martina Franca, along the state road 172, and from Taranto it is accessed via the Punta Penna Pizzone bridge as well as from the Tamburi district - was made the day after the visit that Pope Paul VI held on Christmas night in 1968 in Taranto to celebrate the Mass of the Nativity among the steel workers. On the occasion of the visit, the Municipality of Taranto for several weeks has submitted the two schools to refurbishment works that are still underway in the last few hours. In particular, ordinary maintenance of the green areas and extraordinary maintenance were carried out at the Falcone school according to the setting up of the ceremony location. Finally, minor works have been carried out at the Pirandello school “having already been the subject - announces the Municipality - of robust maintenance interventions of an extraordinary nature.
