Appeal – After Weiach’s decision: Are Zurzibieter allowed to go to school in the canton of Zurich?

Just two weeks ago, the Zurich community of Weiach refused to terminate the controversial school contracts with Kaiserstuhl and Fisibach. Does the vote have to be repeated?

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The students from Fisibach and Kaiserstuhl are still allowed to attend the school in neighboring Weiach ZH. The Weycher school community assembly decided this almost two weeks ago with a clear majority. An initiative had called for the school contracts to be terminated. These have enabled the children of the two Zurzibiet communities to attend school in the Zurich community since 2016. They make up around a third of the students.

A voter from Weiach is now trying to recourse to recourse to the community meeting, as reported by the Zürcher Unterländer. She submitted a voting rights complaint against the school to the district council of Dielsdorf.

Recurrent criticizes lack of control

The meeting took place in the Fisibacher Ebianum due to the corona and for reasons of space. As can be read on the privately operated website “Weiach Blog”, the recurrent justifies her complaint by stating that the verification of those entitled to vote at the school community meeting was inadequate. With 240 officially present voters and 36 guests, more people were present than usual at Weycher community meetings. It gave the impression that everyone could walk in and vote. According to the Weiach Blog, there was no barrier in the hall to separate those who were not eligible to vote from those who were eligible to vote. The recurrent therefore request the repetition of the votes on both agenda items that were decided on that evening – the termination of the contracts and a loan for the classroom extension.

According to the blog, the recurrent has nothing to do with the initiators who had requested the termination of the school contracts. Initiators from the Zurich community, above all former mayor Werner Ebnöther, had asked the school administration to terminate the affiliation contracts in 2020. The Aargau children would incur unreasonable additional costs for local taxpayers in connection with the necessary expansion of the school infrastructure.

Finally, at the meeting two weeks ago, the arguments of the supporters of the school contract convinced that a termination would have negative effects on the otherwise strained financial situation of the Weiach primary school.

But not without heated debates beforehand. The main initiator, Werner Ebnöther, had applied for people who were not entitled to vote to be excluded from the discussions. However, this motion was rejected – as was the one for a secret ballot. The cantonal contributions that Weiach receives for the Zurzibiet children were also on the topic again.

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