Amendment to the budget: Promotion of school swimming

The district council shall decide:           

1. Grants for school swimming will be increased from €380,000 to €750,000.
2. The grants are to be used to cover all costs incurred by the municipalities. This also includes Corona-related revenue shortfalls.

Explanatory memorandum:

About 59 percent of ten-year-olds are not safe swimmers. These are the figures from the current DLRG survey. Due to the lack of swimming lessons as well as closed indoor and outdoor pools, corona has increased this problem even further.

While fewer and fewer children and adolescents are able to swim, more and more indoor pools are closing throughout Germany, as these can no longer be worn by the municipalities. In September 2020, Deutschlandfunk already saw the Federal Republic ‘on its way to the non-swimmer’s country’.

For the municipalities, the provision of public swimming pools incurs costs for maintenance, refurbishment and provision of the swimming facilities. At the same time, the municipalities are incurring corona-related revenue shortfalls, which are to be covered by the increase in subsidies from the district.

Because it is not the municipalities, but the Main-Kinzig-Kreis as school bearer that is responsible for ensuring that the pupils in the circle gain safety in the water through sufficient swimming lessons.

Since the municipal swimming pools are needed for this, it is the obligation of the district to finance them sufficiently by increasing the subsidies.