The floor plan included in the September 2002 Certificate of Ownership of the Proshyan village school clearly showed three structures – the school building, the boiler room and a partly constructed building. The last was begun in 1981-82 but was never completed. All three structures are listed in a “Transfer deed for assets allocated with the right to ownership” issued by the Kotayk provincial administration in the name of the school in November 2002. Today, two of the buildings belong to someone else.

Since October 2003, Armen Khachatryan, a former teacher of mathematics at the Proshyan school which bears the name of freedom fighter Petros Ghevondyan, has been fighting to return the property to the school and to expose the illegal acts of the principal at the time.

“I've sent letters of complaint at every administrative level and have requested a response to the issues I've raised. After all, who is accountable to the average citizen in this country? Who is responsible for state property? I was unfairly fired so that these crimes could be covered up, but who is going to end this lawlessness? They say – let the people help us, let them fight for their rights. Now I'm fighting, I'm writing letters to the authorities so that they can see what's going on and find a solution. But they remain silent, or purposefully complicate the matter so that it remains unsolved,” Khachatryan said.

Armen Khachatryan has requested that law enforcement and state agencies investigate the case of former school principal Davit Davtyan, whom he accuses of giving out fake report cards as well as illegally selling school property (the gymnasium, boiler room, and workshop) with the help of the former head of the village administration.

In the past, the school owned property covering 6 hectares, now it owns only 1.73 hectares. The remaining 4.27 hectares have been privatized in the names of various people, including former village head Vachagan Sahakyan, who privatized 2,700 square meters of school property in his own name in 1998.

Former school principal Davit Davtyan categorically denies any involvement in the privatization of the buildings. “The former village head signed falsified documents, made the arrangements and organized the privatization. Let him return the buildings. Yes, I was the principal, but I wasn't aware of any of this,” Davtyan said.

The current village head, Armen Khachatryan insists, renovated the workshop that belonged to the school using village administration funds and privatized it under the pretext of turning it into a music school.

“There is no documentation in the village administration to prove that the territory belonging to the school has been privatized. We are completely unaware of what means and what legal basis was used to organize this privatization. I have spoken to the former principal but have not received a clear answer. In reality, the law enforcement agencies should deal with this case, or the Ministry of Education. After all, this is their property. I have spoken to the owners of the workshop building and they said that they wouldn't provide any documents and that we should take them to court if we could,” said the current head of the Proshyan administration, Hrach Muradyan.

One of the physical education teachers at the school has renovated part of the gymnasium with his own money and is now living there. The school's educational and recreational field has been turned into backyard lots. Around 900 schoolchildren now study in shifts throughout the day in a school originally designed for 350 students.

The numerous letters that Armen Khachatryan has written to various authorities have borne no fruit. The Ministry of Education advised Khachatryan to write to the law enforcement authorities and, considering its job done, put the matter aside. Khachatryan turned to the governor's office, and then to the prosecutor. Two staff members from the governor's office came and talked to him, took notes, and left. He then wrote letters to the prime minister, the ombudsman and the president of Armenia.

Under orders from the president, the governor's administration formed a committee to deal with the matter. The committee replied to Khachatryan saying that an investigation showed that some structures had collapsed rather than been sold, there was no evidence regarding the illegal sale of final report cards, and that teachers had been relieved of their duties as a result of optimalization.

Armen Khachatryan turned to the president again, demanding a repeat inquiry. The second time around, the committee “discovered” that some of his claims were accurate. Specifically, they found some alumni of the school who had been due to receive their final report cards but never received them, even though they were listed as such and signed for by the principal of the school. “I've never sold report cards. Maybe someone else arranged this behind my back and I ended up signing it,” explained former principal Davit Davtyan.

The Ministry of Education and Science announced that the principal would be removed before the end of the year and a serious investigation would be launched into the case. Meanwhile, the inquiry into the illegal privatization of school property was the duty of the Kotayk Marz administration. After delaying the case for a few months, the governor's office sent a reply to Khachatryan, saying that the case had been handed over to the prosecutor. Khachatryan later learned from the prosecutor's office that the Kotayk administration had sent only the case for the illegal sale of report cards, and that there was no mention of the privatization of school property. He approached the prosecutor and asked that the illegal privatization papers also be added on as part of the case. After that, the governor organized a meeting at the school, headed by the principal, and declared that Armen Khachatryan was guilty of slander.

“Principal Davtyan started persecuting me and used his supporters to cause as much trouble for me as possible and to give me administrative warnings. According to the rules, after two such warnings, you lose your job,” said Armen Khachatryan. The school principal fulfilled his objective in November 2004 and Khachatryan was fired. Khachatryan then went to the Court of First Instance in Yeghvard. The court reinstated him in the school. The principal went to the Court of Appeals, but the verdict was once again in Khachatryan's favor.

While Khachatryan was busy trying to get his job back, the prosecutor's office discovered that Davit Davtyan had indeed illegal sold 11 report cards. They continued to be silent regarding the illegal privatization and even in case of the report cards no criminal case was registered. They explained that there were many pardons offered after this case, and the report cards were never sold with a profit motive. Some time later, the principal gave Khachatryan two more administrative warnings and he lost his job once again. Khachatryan went to the Kotayk governor, who promised to take up the case at the end of the academic year.

The governor of Kotayk also received a letter from former Minister for Education and Science Sergo Yeritsyan, regarding the continued duties of Davtyan as principal. Finally, after a long and drawn out process, the principal was relieved of his duties in accordance with his own wishes on May 3 2006. Meanwhile, Armen Khachatryan petition to get his job back is under investigation by the court to this day.

Since he was relieved of his duties in accordance with his own wishes, Davtyan has the right to remain at the school as a teacher. Now he wants to be vice-principal. Anna Mkrtchyan, a mathematics teacher at the school, is now principal. She has categorically refused to appoint Davtyan to the post of vice-principal. “It would be absurd for him to become vice-principal; just the fact that he's remained at the school as a teacher defies all logic. I don't know how that school property was privatized. The school has no information about this whatsoever,” Mkrtchyan said.