Leaks inside the bus: This is how children with special needs go to school in Cuba.

Children with special needs attending Dora Alonso school, located in Ciudad Escolar Libertad in the municipality of Marianao, travel on a bus that has leaks on rainy days, which prompted complaints on social media.

A video shared by journalist Mario J. Pentón showed the conditions in which small students with special needs are transported, who have to protect themselves with raincoats and umbrellas to avoid getting wet inside the bus that takes them to school.

"These are the conditions in which the children of the special school Dora Alonso in Marianao, Havana, travel. Our children - who have special educational needs - spend three hours on this bus. It's terrible," described the source who sent the recording to Pentón.

On its part, the social media profile and citizen journalism La Tijera published on Facebook photographs of the bus and the complaint of a mother who reported "the precarious conditions in which the bus transporting children with autism is."

According to the account of this person, whose identity was not revealed, "the children, teachers, and the driver get soaked inside [the bus] and arrive home like wet chickens."

"The school doesn't have the resources to fix this. Relevant complaints have been made (...) I wrote to the Population Attention office in the Government, and the complaint went down so much that it reached [the authorities of] Education of [the municipality] Cerro. They made me sign a letter [saying] that they had nothing to do with it, even though this is the responsibility of Education in Marianao," explained the whistleblower.

"After presenting the situation to 'the transportation base management and the provincial head of school transportation, the response is that there are no resources,'" added the mother.

"Right now, there are a few children sick from the rain on September 1st. A mother and her one-month-old baby have contracted the flu because their older daughter got sick that day. What are we waiting for? For a tragedy to happen, for a child to get pneumonia? These are children who mostly don't speak, who can't express their discomfort, who are difficult to medicate, and besides, there are no medicines," the mother asked in her complaint.

Helpless, the parents wonder if it is up to them "to solve this situation," and if, in addition to their children, "do the teachers also deserve this after an intense day of work?"

Therefore, they are making the complaint public and demanding that the authorities provide a solution to the problem of school transportation for children with special needs. "Every rainy afternoon, it's sad to see what happens. There are videos of the waterfalls in this bus."

"I, mother of a child who travels on that bus, demand an immediate solution. Like me, many of us suffer every rainy afternoon waiting for our children and praying that they do not get sick."

In April 2013, the deputy director of the special school Dora Alonso, Yaima Demósthene Stering, explained to the official press the methods used in Cuban special schools to address autism, a disorder associated with the impairment of socialization, communication, and behavior.

According to him, these are stimulation programs linked to specialties such as speech therapy, physiotherapy, music, and computing, among others. Stering emphasized the importance of "the continuity of all school learning at home and the generalization in social environments."

"We must be people truly dedicated to the service of others; one can appreciate, when seeing them there with their students, the incessant work, the effort, and also, the infinite satisfaction they experience every time they achieve progress," said the dictator Fidel Castro about the teachers and staff in general of the school during its inauguration.

An article published in January 2020 by Tribuna de la Habana stated that "during 18 years of work, the school has gained recognized experience in educating children with autism, who from then on had the material and human resources for their individualized and intensive care, in accordance with their particular needs."

Perhaps it's about time that the official journalist Norma Ferrás Pérez dedicates a new article to the Dora Alonso Special School, exposing how, four years later, Cuban children with autism travel on a school transport whose condition compromises their health and well-being.

"A hug to the teachers and workers in the Education sector, who prepared and opened the schools with all love and care. Cuba will continue to bet on quality education for all," wrote the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel on X, wishing a happy start to the school year.

"Congratulations to those boys and girls who can start the school year today. There are mothers who couldn't buy backpacks costing 8,000 and 10,000 pesos and shoes that are really expensive, not to mention the number of children who have nothing to snack on today," a Cuban mother responded.