One year. For an entire school year, Stefan Popovski, an art teacher at a Bitola school, taught classes, graded students, showed up at teachers' councils, ran workshops for competitions - without knowing he'd been fired. That isn't a mistake. It's the kind of institutional chaos that happens only in the Balkans.

Popovski had been engaged at three schools in order to fill a full teaching load. In one of them - the satellite school „Todor Angelevski" in Gorno Orizari, part of Bitola municipality - he taught four hours a week, across two classes. He taught children about color, form, and technique. He took them to art competitions. He helped paint wall murals. He acted like a regular employee. Because he thought he was one.

Reality, as it turns out, was different. Popovski was permanently dismissed in January 2025. He was removed from the payroll. He had no contract. He never received a termination document - and he never signed one. He only discovered this recently, when he noticed something irregular in his salary payment. At a check, he was told: you're no longer employed. Since a year ago.

When he asked for a document, he was handed a dismissal order dated January 29, 2025. An order he never signed, with no official stamp, only the signature of a former director. In other words - a document was drawn up and allegedly delivered, without proper procedure, without any witness, without any signed entry in his personnel file. A scenario that in legal terms shouldn't be valid. But in the Bitola school context, apparently it works.

Popovski asked for back pay and work record for the months he actually worked. The answer: a ban on entering the school and a message that if he went public, he'd never teach again. A direct threat to a teacher's career. From a school building, not from some mafia back room.

The question hanging in the air - are the grades Popovski entered in the e-grade book for an entire school year even valid? If legally he wasn't employed, his grades shouldn't carry any force. What happens to the students? Will they have to repeat? Will the art competition results be annulled? Nobody has an answer. The Ministry of Education is silent. The Bitola municipality, through Mayor Toni Konjanovski, promises „a check". The standard response when something falls apart in public view. Stefan Popovski is now preparing a lawsuit, and once the school has to explain itself in court, maybe then we'll see whether this is „an isolated case" or part of a system.