NEW KINDERGARTEN OPENS IN VETERNIK

Mayor of the City of Novi Sad Mr. Miloš Vučević, together with the Member of the City Council in charge for Education Mr. Vladimir Jelić, opened today a new kindergarten building of the Novi Sad “Radosno Detinjstvo” Preschool Institution, in Veternik in the Paunova Street. The facility’s construction started in 2013, and its size is 3317 m2, while the open spaces amount to 1200 m2. The kindergarten has 8 working rooms, each of 60 m2 in size. Their purpose is for the whole-day accommodation of children, as well as for the crib-age children.
- I congratulate the citizens of Veternik and the Preschool Institution their new – 69th in a row – facility in our City. I am glad that at the opening of this kindergarten we enrolled additional 162 children from Veternik, and we continue with our City Administration for Education to fight together for for the highest quality-conditions in our Preschool Institution, as well as to subsidize the children at privately owned kindergartens, the practice which makes us the leader in Serbia. Novi Sad is growing and progressing, and in 2015/16 we will have a record-number of the enrolled children – as many as 16 000. Let there be in Novi Sad as many children as possible, and we will go on opening new kindergartens and subsidize the private ones at an even larger scale. We are proud of our Preschool Institution, which is of the highest quality in the country. Within the last three years we have been opening new kindergartens, repaying debts we found in 2012 in the excess of 7 million EUR, we introduced the practice of subsidizing privately owned kindergartens, and we will continue to invest in education of our youngest citizens. – said Mayor Vučević. 
Member of the City Council in charge for Education Mr. Vladimir Jelić said that opening of the new kindergarten in Veternik is the proof that the City is conducting a well-balanced development policy, both in the urban and suburban communities.
- This year we opened the Radnička Street facility, expanded the Liman facility capacity, and also finalized the annex upgrade of the Petrovaradin facility.  In this way, we enrolled thousands of new children who so far had been only on our waiting lists. Apart from that, we subsidized 500 children enrolled in privately owned facilities, and it is our expectation that by the end of the year additional 500 subsidized children will be enrolled in private kindergartens, which makes it a total of 2000 children less on the waiting list. Due to the exceptionally high natural increase of the population in our city, we are not in a position to completely abolish the waiting lists. Nevertheless, I am convinced that next year we will be able, once we use the capacities of some primary schools and adapt their facilities for the purpose of kindergartens, to completely solve this several decade long problem. – said Mr. Jelić.
The Veternik facility employs 22 workers, there are 162 enrolled children, 110 out of them for a whole-day accommodation, and the crib-age children 52. The new kindergarten bears the name “Roda” (Stork), and the total amount of the City-invested funds is 40 million RSD. 

In Novi Sad, September 1st 2015