Ruotsinkylä school as part of the service network, initiative

Kati Lepojärvi, Matti Alanko, Aarno Järvinen, Mirka Kovalainen, Mila Lehtonen, Johanna Sipiläinen and Erja Sarenius-Salmenkivi presented the following council initiative: 

The oldest school in Tuusula, Ruotsinkylä School, celebrated its 130th anniversary last year. The results of the Tuusula school satisfaction survey have been excellent for Ruotsinkylä School – for example, in terms of the quality of teaching, safety and proximity to nature – consistently above the average results for all schools.

The strength of Ruotsinkylä School has always been its strong sense of community. The school is the centre of the village, where the individual needs of children are taken into account. It is said that the whole village raises the children. We have seen this happen in Ruotsinkylä.

The aim of Tuusula’s mayor’s programme for 2017–2021 and service network plan for 2018–2028 was to reform the service network by closing schools and daycare centres with indoor air quality problems and building new ones. Serious structural damage and indoor air problems were found in the prefabricated section of Ruotsinkylä School, built in 1976, and the section was demolished. At the same time, it was decided to close the school for indoor air reasons when Lahela Comprehensive School was completed. An additional wing was built to replace the demolished section, and a pavilion building was ordered for the school in 2019 on a rental basis. The cost of the new construction was estimated at €650,000. During the procurement phase of the pavilion building, the option of purchasing it for the municipality was also considered.

Ruotsinkylä School operated in these premises until 2024, when the municipal education department announced the closure of the school and the transfer of pupils to the future Riihikallio School. The pupils, parents and teachers all opposed this sudden closure and transfer. However, the council decided that the school would continue to operate as originally planned until the completion of Lahela School, estimated to be in 2029.

The implementation of the new daycare and school centre in Lahela has been postponed by four years due to cost reasons. The school has been designed for the Lahelanpelto III area. The costs of the project have risen to record levels due to the difficult soil conditions. At the same time, we have a vibrant, cost-effective school in Ruotsinkylä that is rated highly for the quality of its teaching, and whose pupils are scheduled to transfer to the future school in Lahela for indoor air quality reasons. However, as there are no longer any known indoor air quality issues in the school’s current premises, there is no longer any reason to close the school.

If Ruotsinkylä School remains part of the Tuusula service network, this will also bring cost savings for the construction of Lahela School. It is important that children in Lahela and the surrounding area finally have access to a new daycare and school building with healthy indoor air.

In our view, Tuusula’s diverse service network can accommodate not only new units but also village centre schools, which offer high-quality individualised teaching, safer school journeys and proximity to nature. In addition, ways should be found to manage the municipality’s investment costs.

We propose that Ruotsinkylä School remain part of the Tuusula service network and request that the Education Department initiate investigations and preparations to make this possible. We also propose that the municipality pay particular attention to the assessment of preliminary impacts as a key factor in the preparation of the service network, including a child-centred approach, the views and experiences of users, the quality of teaching and the assessment of the overall costs of the service network. In addition, it would be valuable to take into account the municipality’s history and cultural heritage in service network planning and to preserve it whenever possible.

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