The education ministry should take over stand-alone nurseries, Sofia deputy mayor Desislava Zhelyazkova said at a briefing.
One body should run the nurseries, she said, and apply the early childhood development standard, which has been ready for years but never adopted.
Zhelyazkova also wants the wording of the Pre-school and School Education Act made more precise, so it reads the same way to everyone and a change of minister does not change the position. Over the years, different ministers have given many different readings of the text, she said, and the very need for interpretation shows it must be clearer.
Sofia Municipality has proposed changes to the law, its regulations and the Health Act many times. For more than two years it has sent them to the ministers of education and science and of health, and to committee chairs. Some of the proposals are already in a bill that passed first reading with the backing of almost all political parties, which pleases Zhelyazkova.
The bill also covers extra services such as children's centres, cooperatives and baby groups, which have sparked debate. Municipalities want the right to keep a register of where they are, how many there are and how many children attend.
According to Zhelyazkova, municipalities do not want these extra services recognised in law or brought closer to the structure of nurseries and kindergartens. They are a different kind of service, which parents choose because there are no places or because they want to. The register will show which of the two is the reason, and if it is a lack of places in municipal facilities, the responsibility lies fully with the municipality.
Under the health minister's reading, one nurse is enough for a childcare facility, while the ministry's position is that there cannot be more than one.
In kindergartens without nurses, teachers work with the children, and their pay comes from the education budget of the facility. Zhelyazkova called this a temporary fix that is very hard even for large kindergartens, because funding standards for upkeep were raised by up to 5%, and that is not enough.
Each specialist should do the tasks they are best trained for, she explained. Speech therapists work with non-verbal children and with speech problems. Teachers help children develop through play and activities. Nurses monitor health, flag any deviations from the norm and respond in emergencies. This does not mean nurseries have had no education and work with children until now, Zhelyazkova stressed.
The deputy mayor's biggest concern is that no nursery, kindergarten or school is left without a medical worker, and quite a few have none at the moment. The problem is national and huge, she said.
Sofia Municipality and the district mayors are still waiting to hear who will hire the medical staff and how. They also ask where the money for their pay will come from: the health budget or the education budget.
There has been talk of a nurse shortage for years, and nurses could be redistributed in the right way, said Nadezhda Bacheva, deputy mayor for social activities and health. Municipal medical facilities need them too. The shortage calls for a systematic, long-term solution, she said.
Sofia Municipality is working to improve conditions for nurses, Bacheva said. "Their pay has gone up by 35% since the start of the term," she said. This year nurses also get a 2% supplement on their salary for length of service, for the first time in ten years.
The municipality also gives scholarships to future nurses, but so far there are few of them, Bacheva said. Sofia Municipality aims to build on and widen its support.
Agreements with the Faculty of Public Health, signed at the start of the year, provide for nurses to train at the Fifth City Hospital.