Skopje Council Dismissed the "Pance Arsovski" School Board Without Seeing the Report: A Vote Without the Evidence Is Not a Decision, It Is a Signature

The Skopje City Council dismissed the school board of the "Pance Arsovski" gymnasium. The decision was taken on an enforceable ruling by the State Education Inspectorate, which found "serious violations in operations". The councillors who voted for it never saw the report stating what those violations are.

That is the whole story in one sentence - and it is not about a single school.

What the councillors know, and what they do not

The City of Skopje's services explained that the Council and the mayor have no legal authority to review or interpret the Inspectorate's decisions, and are obliged to implement the enforceable ruling. If the Council fails to do so, under its supervisory powers the Education Ministry will dismiss the board and appoint an acting head.

Legally, that is most likely correct. The Council really is not an appeals commission. VMRO-DPMNE councillor Aneta Markovska-Ilievska put it the same way: "We here are neither a court nor an appeals commission" - the Council, in her view, is there only to decide for, against or abstain.

But then another question arises, and nobody answered it today: what is the point of a vote where the body voting knows in advance that only one outcome is permitted, and where the evidence was never handed over? A vote without the evidence is not a decision - it is a signature.

What the "serious violations" are

According to SDSM councillor Goran Simonovski, there are two. First: an unmet quota of teaching hours because one lesson was not entered in the electronic register - where the law allows a 5 percent deviation. Second: a school trip that lasted one day longer because the operator's buses returned after 12:00, which counts as another whole day.

If that is an accurate description of the offences, then the phrase "serious violations in operations" carries far more weight than the allegations themselves. And the phrase is what reaches the Council - not the allegations.

Simonovski also pointed out what the dismissed head, Jovan Petreski, who ran the school since 2018, had done: he installed solar panels on the school roof, replaced all the windows, put on an energy-efficient facade. Those are exactly the items now sitting on the government's list of plans for other schools.

The timeline

The Inspectorate first delivered a report with proposed measures to the head teacher, then to the school board. Since neither acted within the legal 30-day deadline, the case reached the City Council as the founder of the secondary school. The head teacher was already dismissed on 27 August. The board was dismissed six months after that same Council appointed it.

Councillor Katerina Canevska Arsovska pointed out that the dismissed head teacher was not returned to the post he held before he began running the school, and that both he and the board had acted on the proposed measures. "Schools cannot allow head teachers to be party loyalists, and inspection oversight must even less be a mechanism for eliminating them," she said.

Where the real question is

The Council majority says everything was done by the book. The opposition says it is party revanchism. Both sides can be right at once - the procedure can be flawless and the outcome still political.

Which is exactly why one thing is being asked, and it is a small thing: make the State Education Inspectorate's report available. If it really does set out serious violations, that document defends the decision better than any speech in the chamber. If it sets out an unlogged lesson in the e-register and a bus that ran late, that is learned from the same document too.

An institution that establishes violations has an obligation to show them. Anything else turns the inspectorate from a control mechanism into a tool whose weight depends on who is holding it.