According to an announcement on the webpage of Perm Krai's gubernatorial office, the region's sole Mari school will be left in operation, its old building will be renovated and a new structure for a grade school and daycare will be built next to it, FennoUgria Asutus reports.

Perm Krai authorities informed residents of Suksun Mari villages in early June that only a daycare and primary school would remain of the middle school, located in the village of Vaskino.

Local residents began fighting for the school's survival. Residents turned towards the krai's education ministry with a request to give the school the status of being an immersion institution teaching national language, history and culture.

Parents threatened to leave their children at home entirely in the event the school was closed. Opponents of the closure composed a letter to the authorities expressing their indignation over broken promises. "If there is no school, then Mari villages will not remain and the Mari will disappear from Perm Krai entirely," they complained.

The problem was widely reported on in the media and even Finnish European Parliament (EP) representatives stepped up to defend the school. Although instruction in Vaskino school is carried out in Russian language, an additional two hours of Mari language and literature is taught in the school each week. The school also fulfills the function of being a cultural center where Mari cultural traditions are preserved and developed further.

A total 5,395 Maris lived in Perm Oblast in 2002, according to statistical data. The majority of Mari live in the Suksun district, where seven Mari villages are located: Vaskino (Engermutšaš), Ivankovo (Engertüng), Tebenjaki (Suli), Syzganka (Kyzgande), Krasnyi Lug (Olyk), Kamenka (Kalmašenger) and Tukmany (Tukman). The greater portion of residents in three of these villages – Vaskino, Ivankovo and Tebenjaki – are Mari and children there who have previously attended the Vaskino middle school also speak the language there.

The Vaskino school was closed in the mid 1980's due to structural damage and because of this, the children went to a middle school built in the neighboring Russian village of Bori. Yet in the wake of Perestroika, Russian villages joined into their own collective and opened the school once again.

The communal farm has by now deteriorated and most residents of the Mari villages are unemployed. There are no mobile communications services in the villages. Road connections between two groups of villages are nonexistent although they are located just ten kilometers away from the other. Mari peoples in the Suksun district have never heard Mari radio nor seen television programs in their native language.