Argentina's Buenos Aires and Corrientes provinces pass laws on cooperative schools and mental health

The Senate of Buenos Aires Province approved a new law that creates a regulatory framework for community‑run cooperative schools. Drafted with former deputy Lucía Klug, the Federación de Escuelas Cooperativas de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (Feceaba) and the provincial Directorate of Culture and Education, the measure establishes a provincial register of such schools and a dedicated unit within the Directorate to systematize information, strengthen institutions and promote coordination with public and private schools. Klug emphasized that the law “recognizes a third type of school management, not only public or private, showing that cooperative education is another way of managing where the state sometimes does not reach and the market does not find it profitable.”

In Corrientes Province, deputies Eduardo Hardoy and Natalia Romero have introduced a bill to adopt a provincial protocol for responding to mental‑health crises in public administration and state‑run schools. The proposal, currently under review by the health and constitutional affairs commissions, aims to provide clear guidelines for handling psychotic episodes, suicidal crises, acute stress, and substance‑withdrawal emergencies, citing the national Mental Health Law and recent national protocols as models.