At its session on April 17, the Government of Montenegro gave the green light for the project to build a park in the courtyard of the "Niko Rolović" Gymnasium in Bar, and recommended that the Municipality of Bar and the gymnasium conclude an agreement regulating mutual rights and obligations regarding the park.
This was stated by the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Anđela Jakšić-Stojanović, at today's session of the Parliament of Montenegro.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MESI) has tasked the Bar High School and the Municipality of Bar to inform the MESI and the Government about the agreement after it is signed.
"That project is really very nicely done. Last year, we had very good cooperation with the Mayor of Bar, (Dušan) Raičević, a Memorandum of Cooperation was signed, and it was thanks to that Memorandum that we implemented major infrastructure projects last year," said Jakšić-Stojanović.
The aforementioned park, after renovation, will not just be a space for high school students, she said, but a beautiful space and ambiance that will provide both the people of Baran and tourists with a "wonderful place to gather."
"Vijesti" announced today that the cornerstone for the new kindergarten, which the people of Bar have been waiting for for six years since the decades-old cypress trees in the high school yard were cut down, will be laid next week.
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It has been more than six years since the felling of about 90 century-old cypress trees in the courtyard of the Bar high school, in order to build a kindergarten. Before dawn, the machines began cutting down despite the loud opposition of the people of Bar. Mass protests followed.
The cypress trees were cut down with the help of security, secretly from the people of Baran and Baranka who protested against this decision by the then government headed by Duško Marković.
The new yard, shared by two secondary schools and one elementary school, is not yet there, but after years of waiting, work on the construction of the kindergarten is beginning, and work on the reconstruction of the yard is also beginning.
Jakšić-Stojanović shared new information about the landscaping of the courtyard in the center of Bar after a speech by Democratic Montenegro MP Momčilo Leković, who said that in 2019, cypress trees were cut down in front of the Bar high school and the schoolyard was destroyed.
Not only cypress trees were cut down, as he said, but also a memory and a symbol, a connection between generations.
"Some will say – it was just a technical decision, a question of reconstruction or urbanism. But for us who come from that city, for all those who walked those paths, who grew up under those trees – it was not just the cutting down of trees. It was a painful cut through memories, through the identity of the city, through the roots of generations," Leković pointed out.
If we really want to talk about the development of Montenegro, in his words, then we must start from the places that taught us, and the Bar Gymnasium and the School of Economics taught generations.
He appealed to the Municipality of Bar, which he said must recognize that the Bar Gymnasium is not just a school, but a pillar of Bar, and that the renovation of the courtyard is not "correcting their foolish mistakes from that period, but an obligation that they have been ignoring for six years."
He also appealed to all other competent state bodies to include specific funds for the renovation and improvement of the schoolyard of the Bar High School in their plans for the development of education, culture and space.
"I ask that this yard not be left to oblivion. I ask that it be arranged. I ask that new trees be planted - cypress and olive trees, which will grow together with the new generations that will grow up in this space. I ask that a space be created where students will be able to learn, talk, and dream, just like their parents and grandparents once did," Leković demanded.
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