The neighboring villages of Vardakar and Nor Kyank may be a stone’s throw away from each, but they have come to loggerheads over a school.

During the Soviet era, the two communities were united as one economic collective. This meant that students from Vardakar could attend classes in the better equipped school in Nor Kyank.

The school in Nor Kyank, built in 1969, was modern by comparison to the one in Vardakar; a squat one storey long and narrow building built in the 1930s.

That all changed in the 1980s when the two villages split administratively. Vardakar students no longer enjoyed the option of going to the better school in Nor Kyank.

When the 1988 earthquake damaged the village school in Vardakar so badly that it was declared unsafe, local residents assumed that a new school would be built.

 And initially the news was encouraging. In 2010 they learnt that the damaged school would be damaged and a new one built. But their hopes were dashed when the government said it didn’t have the necessary funds.

Meanwhile, the school in neighboring Nor Kyank was renovated and a new annex built by the Lincy Foundation.

The refurbished school was envisaged to accommodate 360 students. Planners figured it would be capable of housing the 200 students in Nor Kyank plus the 100 students who would be coming from nearby Vardakar.

But Vardakar residents balked.

Parents have chosen not to send their kids to the Nor Kyank School and have started holding classes in their village’s cultural center.

Galoust Avetisyan

“They shouldn’t have renovated that school,” Vardakar Mayor Galoust Avetisyan complained. “They could have used the money to repair our school.”

The Vardakar mayor is pushing for a new school to be built in his community and says that the issue has been included in the Shirak Province 2014-2017 Development Plan.

“As far as I know, the project has an estimated cost of 280 million AMD. But who can say when it will happen. The resources will have to be allocated from the state budget,” Avetisyan said.

To make space for the classrooms in the only large building that once housed the mayor’s office and the cultural center, the municipality now works out of a private house for which it pays 60,000 AMD monthly.

“We have 40 kindergarten age children but no space to start a pre-school. The only large building in the village now houses the school. True, our local budget is small, but the state will subsidize us if we decide to build one,” said the mayor.

Vardakar students attend classes in the former cultural center

The 797 residents of Vardakar also face challenges not connected to the school.

150 of them leave the village every year to find seasonal employment.

In the past three years three families have left for good.