Prior to the recent war in Artsakh, Gayaneh Grigoryan was the principal of the Hadrut high school, a position she held for the past two years.

She left for Armenia soon after the war broke out on September 27, taking only the bare necessities with her.

Practically the entire Hadrut region in Artsakh was captured by Azerbaijani forces.

Grigoryan says residents of the city were evacuated on the first day of the war, thinking they’d return in a few days. Nothing was removed from the school when they left.

 "We did not save anything. Today I saw a video showing the school building. It looked like it had been turned into a headquarters,” she says, followed by several minutes of silent reflection.

587 students attended the school before the war. It employed fifty-one teachers and had a support staff of twenty-two. The school was only open for two weeks during the fall semester. That was in late September.

Most of the teachers now live in Yerevan. They try to keep in touch with their students. No online classes are conducted.

The teachers met with Artsakh Minister of Education, Science and Culture of Artsakh Lusineh Gharakhanyan, as well as an employee of the Education Department of the Hadrut region, but neither of them said anything definite about future classroom teaching.

Grigoryan says that Minister Gharakhanyan has taken steps to find work for the teachers, some of whom now man the phones at the Artsakh Information Headquarters in Stepanakert.

"I have a great desire to go back. I need a job. I have a school-age child. How can I take care of him without a job? It’s terrible that so many people have lost their jobs. There were 28 schools in the region. Many teachers are no unemployed,” says Grigoryan. In October, the teachers received a one-time salary of 100,000 drams ($196),

Grigoryan proposes that one of the schools in Stepanakert should be allocated to the people of Hadrut. 

"Maybe we should all go and reassemble there. That our students should come back to keep the name of the Hadrut secondary school alive. This is our wish. We need something now so that we can somehow preserve our history, so that we do not disappear from history.”

When asked whether the Hadrut teachers will get jobs in Stepanakert schools, Grigoryan said local teachers will probably fill those jobs despite their desire to work. 

Artsakh Education, Science, and Culture Minister Lusineh Gharakhanyan told Hetq that teachers in Artsakh schools will be allowed to transfer their employment records. The minister added that she has contacted her counterpart in Armenia, requesting that Artsakh teachers now in Armenia be fast-tracked for vacancies.