A €1.3 million renovation is underway. The historic school on Via Manzoni will have a new roof and facade.

With the city's oldest school packed up, the restyling of the elementary school on Via Manzoni in Cernusco is underway. The cost is six figures: just under €1.3 million to redo the roof and facades of the historic 1930s building where generations of children learned to read, write, and do math. No funds were received from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP); the city did it all on its own. The restyling of the elementary school is among the most anticipated, having been included in a large program of upgrades dedicated to children—from new lighting to the preschools on Via Mosè Bianchi and Via Dante, to the expansion and renovation of the nursery school on Via Don Milani—but funding for this last project from Rome hasn't arrived. Hence the decision to move forward anyway. The goal, "to offer increasingly comfortable and contemporary environments," explains the Municipality .

New life is coming to the centrally located complex, which houses 25 classrooms, 24 of which accommodate 550 students, plus a library, a computer room, a space dedicated to inclusion, a cafeteria, and a small lounge. There are also laboratories and a small gym for psychomotor skills with locker rooms. In recent years, some interior renovations have been carried out, the first being in the refectory. Kitchens and tables, once in the basement, are now on the mezzanine level in the West Wing "to better meet the needs of students and teachers." The bathrooms were also renovated in the same spirit. Work is now moving outside; a quick glance is enough to tell it needs a refresh.

This isn't the only plan the opposition has entertained for the city's schools. Vivere Cernusco has requested in the council chamber an expansion of the elementary school grounds on Via Martini, "currently too small." The list would like to build them on the adjacent area previously designated for the middle school, the city's third, which was scrapped a year and a half ago by the administration due to pressure from the opposition, given the demographic decline that has affected the Naviglio area. "Those spaces could be used to give the elementary school a breathing space," its representatives explained in the council chamber, but the proposal failed to gain traction with the majority. "Yet it safeguards the greenery, making it available to children."

Barbara Calderola

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